![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/ufos.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A few days ago, I was driving past the airport.\u00a0 It was night time, and the sky was filled with the lights of airplanes that were either descending into Atlanta Hartsfield, or circling and awaiting their turn to begin touchdown of their aircraft.\u00a0 Seeing all these blinking lights cutting through the dark night sky made me think about my childhood, and how when I was a kid, such a sight would have been more than sufficient at giving me nightmares for a week.<\/span><\/p>\n When I was like 9-10 years old, I remember watching television, and seeing a commercial for either\u00a0Unsolved Mysteries<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Sightings<\/em>; that part I can\u2019t recollect specifically, but the advertised episode was one that of UFOs and alien abductions.\u00a0 I vaguely recall the commercial having all sorts of amateur footage of people filming lights in the sky, unorthodox flight patterns of lights floating around in the sky, lots of people gasping and exclaiming their surprise at seeing\u00a0clearly<\/em>\u00a0an alien spacecraft, and the kind of phenomenon that would be more ridiculed and laughed at today, than it would have back in like 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n That commercial itself didn\u2019t necessarily scare me as much as it kind of fascinated me, but that night, I had the mother of nightmares involving invading UFOs and alien abductions from little green creatures that were closer to\u00a0Mars Attacks!<\/em>\u00a0than\u00a0Aliens<\/em>, and\u00a0<\/em>my life was not the same for about the next two years.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n After that nightmare, I had this fear of UFOs and the aliens that rode aboard them that wanted nothing more than to snatch me off in the middle of the night and take me into space for god knows what purpose.\u00a0 The result of such na\u00efve fear was that after the sun set and the night sky engulfed the world, I simply refused to look at the sky.\u00a0 ALL blinking lights in the sky were unquestionably alien space ships at night, and if I didn\u2019t see them, they didn\u2019t exist, and if they didn\u2019t exist, they couldn\u2019t swoop down and abduct me.<\/span><\/p>\n I shit you not, this is how I thought when I was a kid.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, not looking at the sky once night fell was a very tall order on the grand scheme of things, as, as much it would be nice to simply not do anything once night fell, that\u2019s just not always possible.\u00a0 Especially in the winter time, when the sun set at like 5:30 pm, and there were still plenty of things to accomplish in the evening that required going outside like going to Tae Kwon Do classes, piano lessons, or running errands with mom.\u00a0 Every single one of those endeavors resulted in me sitting down in the car and refusing to look up out the windows with fear of seeing any sort of blinking lights in the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n Occasionally, in my peripheral vision, I would catch a glimpse of blinking lights in the sky, and internally, I would be pretty much having a panic attack.\u00a0 The UFO ship clearly knows that I saw it, and the only way to silence me would be to abduct me.<\/span><\/p>\n Where I was living at the time, there was a tower of some sort not far from the house.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if it was just a power line, or transmitter of some sort, but whatever it was, it had a stationery blinking light on top of it.\u00a0 This fucking thing, even though I knew what it was, was still the source of lots of inadvertent anxiety during those years, because I more than I\u2019d liked to have had, caught a glimpse of its blinking light in the middle of the night.<\/span><\/p>\n Halloween was pretty much the worst holiday in the world during this period of time, because it pretty much meant spending 3-4 hours outside in the middle of the night.\u00a0 Seriously, if it were up to me, I wouldn\u2019t have done it at all, but I had neighborhood friends, and in spite of my fears, Halloween candy was always a good thing to have.\u00a0 So under the belief that in the guise of a costume and in the company of friends, I would be safe from the UFOs, I went out trick or treating regardless.\u00a0 Although, I remember letting my guard down for a moment one year, and seeing a truly scurry looking UFO in the sky that made me clench of cringe internally while trying to remain excited about trick or treating.<\/span><\/p>\n I lucked out the next year, because I got sick during Halloween.\u00a0 So instead of going out into the scary UFO filled sky night, I stayed home with\u00a0A Link to the Past<\/em>, and had no risk of seeing or being abducted by UFOs.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, this is something that I eventually grew out of, as I suppose I began to wonder why I was so scurred of UFOs in the first place.\u00a0 By the time I was in the sixth grade is when the\u00a0X-Files\u00a0<\/em>began airing, and the first episodes revolved around UFOs and the abduction of Mulder\u2019s sister.\u00a0 Instead of being frightened by this new show that was clearly meant to test my courage, I confronted it head on, and actually became a fan of the show until FOX fucked the scheduling and subsequently the show like a Thai hooker.<\/span><\/p>\n Either way, sometimes it\u2019s amusing to see something that reminds me of my childhood, and to take a look back and reminisce about it, even if it makes me sound like a gigantic sissy.\u00a0 But there really was a period in my formative years where I simply was afraid to look at the sky at night.\u00a0 Funny how things work out, because I certainly enjoy looking up at a clear night sky these days, now that I\u2019m all old and shit.<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder if there are kids today that were like how I was, and are afraid of blinking lights and flying things in the middle of the night?\u00a0 Because as often as I travel, I\u2019ve probably been on an airplane traveling in the night, that some kid like me had inadvertently glimpsed at, and thought was a UFO full of aliens that want to abduct them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few days ago, I was driving past the airport.\u00a0 It was night time, and the sky was filled with the lights of airplanes that were either descending into Atlanta Hartsfield, or circling and awaiting their turn to begin touchdown of their aircraft.\u00a0 Seeing all these blinking lights cutting through the dark night sky made … Continue reading The childhood fear<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,15,52,99],"class_list":["post-38205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-nostalgia","tag-og","tag-owned","tag-reminiscing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38207,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38205\/revisions\/38207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}