Do I Believe In Aliens? I Don’t Know, But I Definitely Believe In Idiot Teenagers.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I started working on this piece a few years ago. Only recently did I finish it. I am happy to report that I survived graduate school and am the proud owner of a really expensive piece of paper saying I have a Master’s in Social Work. And I am ridiculously happy that I no longer have to rely solely on DVDs to get my Unsolved Mysteries fix.

 

Graduate school sucks. Working  full time while also doing graduate school REALLY sucks. So recently I decided that I needed to get myself a little treat. Said little treat needed to be something without calories, because my previous Little Treats to survive graduate school have caused my tummy to become Not So Little. So I decided that I was going to order some more “Unsolved Mysteries” DVDs.

 

I LOVE “Unsolved Mysteries.” And to be clear, I’m talking about the old school Unsolved Mysteries. I need Robert Stack in a trenchcoat walking down a smoky alleyway arching his brow quizzically at every question he asks. Robert Stack could make anything sound intriguing and scary and thrilling all at the same time. Any other person could ask a mundane stupid question and it would be just that: a mundane stupid question. But Mr. Elliott Ness could turn it into a must see event. I can see it now…

 

***It’s a pitch black evening except for one low, flickering streetlamp. Fog is rolling through the alleyway. Suddenly, Robert Stack comes around the corner in a trenchcoat.***

 

ROBERT STACK: Atlanta housewife LouAnn Busybody found a box of raisins on sale for $0.99. Across town in a similar store, another housewife, Betsy Slutbunny, found the same box of raisins priced at $0.79. A simple matter of one store having the better deal? Conspiracy expert Ned Frumbish thinks perhaps there is more to it. Perhaps…it was murder.

 

*cue the scary theme music*

 

Murder conspiracies are always the answer in the Unsolved Mysteries universe. The only other possible answer is aliens. Which brings me back to the start of this story. I really wanted more Unsolved Mysteries DVDs for my collection. But the only available set that I could afford was the UFO collection. I would preferred something else, like the nonexistent Robert Stack claiming everything is murder collection. But given the choice between UFOs and not getting Unsolved Mysteries at all, I choose aliens.

 

The day I came home from work and found that my DVDs had arrived, I quickly changed into pajamas, fired up the DVD player, and jumped into bed. (Yes, I watch Unsolved Mysteries before going to bed. I can’t watch horror movies EVER, not even in broad daylight, because fake scary stories terrify me. But I can watch real scary stuff at night and blissfully drift off to fitful slumber. I wish I could blame graduate school for this insanity, but I’ve always been this way. Weird, I know.) Anyways, getting back to the point…

 

So I start watching the UFO stories. They’re all pretty formulaic. Guy sees weird stuff in the sky. He tells people. Lots of people don’t believe him. The military loudly proclaims they have no comment. The believers immediately point to the military’s denial as proof that there really are aliens. A snotty non-UFO believing scientist is interviewed to give A Logical Explanation for the phenomenon which only makes sense to other snotty scientists. (“That light you saw? Anyone with common sense knows that the gaseous interactions of the quadralatical vortex produce a bright light when they come into contact with the invisible molecular atomic subparticles present in the modern domesticated grass plant. I mean, that’s elementary science right there.”) (Okay, the non-believing snotty scientist probably said something that truly IS common sense and understandable to a layperson. But all of that sounds like nonsense to this English major.) And then a pro-UFO snotty scientist philosopher person gives a counterpoint about how UFOs *must* be real because “there’s got to be intelligent life out there.” At this point in the episode the guy who actually saw something is practically ignored. It becomes a Debate of Snotty Scientists with closing remarks from Robert Stack and his questioning eyebrows. (“Did Lester Hootenanny actually see a UFO from his pickup truck that night? Or was his hound dog simply howling at a military weather balloon illuminated by the gaseous interactions of the quadralatical vortex? Perhaps there is a logical earthly explanation for the sighting. Perhaps we are not alone in the universe. Or perhaps…just perhaps…it was murder.”)

 

While I was happy to have more Unsolved Mysteries to watch, I found myself annoyed. But for the first time ever, I finally realized why I find the UFO episodes annoying:

 

EVERYONE ASSUMES THE ALIENS ARE INTELLIGENT.

 

Why do we do this? Is it just our way of being polite and giving them the benefit of the doubt?

 

For all we know, these aliens could be a bunch of joyriding teenagers from another planet. Go with me on this one. One of these teens just got a driving permit, so they decide to take Mom and Dad’s flying saucer out for a spin. They have a little too much to drink, they get lost, they crash. People find the crash. Mom and Dad alien get embarrassed. You think the mythical Men In Black are secret government agents whose mission to is to cover up the existence of aliens? That’s only partially true. I think they’re really friends with Mom and Dad alien who are worried that if news of Junior’s space joyriding got out on intergalactic social media, it might mess up his chances of getting into his planet’s equivalent of Harvard.

 

That might explain all the reports of alien kidnappings, too. Maybe Junior is a better driver now that he’s sobered up a bit. He’s won back Mom and Dad Alien’s trust by volunteering to clean up their pet sandworm’s droppings for the past month. His grades have improved. He doesn’t object to his parents’ snooping through his intergalactic social media to monitor his behavior. Mom and Dad Alien decide to reward his initiative by letting him take out their old space saucer (which has a tracking device).

 

So this time for fun he and his friends go out one night to explore. They encounter some humans out minding their own business. Junior’s friends suggest it would be funny to beam them up, poke them, mess with their heads. They’re probing, prodding, having a good time, when suddenly JUNIOR REMEMBERS THE TRACKER.

 

“We are going to be grounded for a month!” he yells at his friends as they hurriedly dump the poor kidnapped humans back in their beds and try to destroy the evidence by hastily deploying some crude memory erasing technology. They zip back to their home planet, working on their cover story amongst themselves (“what if we tell them we just went out to look at the newest star?” “They won’t buy that; that’s too nerdy!”), praying that Mom and Dad don’t have the Men in Black on speed dial. Meanwhile their human victims are waking up with killer headaches and wondering what the hell happened.

 

So that’s my theory. I’m sure there is intelligent life out there somewhere, but I’m not convinced it’s ALL intelligent. Some of it’s probably pretty stupid. All that being said, I’m in no hurry to meet any of this intelligent (or maybe not so intelligent) alien life out there. I’ll leave that up to the Men in Black.

 

Should you be reading this, Junior, know that I *will* rat you out to Mom and Dad alien if you mess with me. So if you value your admission to space Harvard, you’ll leave me alone. Tell your friends. And keep your crazy crop circles off my lawn!