The first house we rented on Maui was at the end of a long, shared alley (or driveway, depending on how you look at it). There were three or four houses whose garages faced it and had little 5- or 10-foot driveways, and it was several hundred yards long leading to the cul-de-sac. Often I found myself staring up at the stars – there were no skyscrapers and few cars, so every night was good for stargazing – and it was on one of these occasions I didn’t see a flying saucer.
I caught it out of the corner of my eye. It was a tiny flaming dot traversing the night sky, and just as I opened my mouth to say “Hey, shooting star!” it reversed direction and flew back the way it came. It wasn’t a straight reversal though; it was a hairpin on a dime. The next day I asked an astronomy teacher at my brother’s high school what could cause that.
“Well, if it were a meteor breaking up it would’ve split up in two,” he said.
“Right.”
“…and there would’ve been trails, probably not a dot. If it hit something like another meteor or a satellite and ricocheted off, it would’ve slowed down a great deal. I mean, even hitting it head-on, and going almost straight backwards, it would still slow down a lot.”
“Is that physics?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Cool. Is that astrophysics?”
“Ehhhhhh, kind of. If you’re interested in physics, you should talk to one of the physics teachers here. Mr. Imada is – “
“So what object could just zip around and fly back like that?”
“I don’t know, jonny; are you telling me you think you saw a UFO?”
“Well, I didn’t see anything but that flaming dot. It could’ve been an airplane, or spaceship, satellite or meteor…I really didn’t see anything solid.”
“Still strange,” he concluded.
He never suggested a UFO, but it still didn’t sit well with me. It wasn’t until years later, after I’d moved to Georgia, then Virginia, I saw a tv special on UFO’s seen in space. Over satellite footage of a meteor colliding with another and reducing its speed (dramatically) and course (not so dramatically) from the impact, the narrator claimed that no known vehicle could change course so radically and suddenly and continue at such high speed, though several such sightings had been reported.
Coincidentally, it was less than a year after I saw that special I didn’t see another UFO. In fact, I didn’t see a whole fleet of them, in the sky, in broad daylight. I was working in a mall when it happened. I was an assistant manager at this store near Richmond, and it was right next to the main entrance to the building. I was running a Friday evening shift with two or three associates. As they walked the aisles, helping the customers, I was ringing at the register and doling out breaks.
I helped this middle-aged couple buy something for their kids and I got back to my shift. About a half hour later, they came jog-walking back in – the husband started talking to me when they were still in the hall.
“Well, Jesus, I can’t believe it.”
“What’s up, guys?”
“About eight or ten UFO’s out there, probably a dozen people just saw it.”
I vaulted over the counter and ran outside, leaving my keys with one of my associates. I hadn’t gotten a close-enough look at my strange object over Maui skies so I was determined. Of course by the time I got there, I’d missed them. The people outside were in a panic and talking to one another, or to 911.
“Maybe almost a dozen of them in a V formation…”
“…just floated right towards the mall and overhead…”
“…they almost stopped, then they zipped off so fast they broke the god-damn sound barrier did you hear that boom? That’s what it was.”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“Sure thing, ma’am; way I see it they might be the last ones we ever get to smoke.”
“I was in the Air Force for 27 years and I never saw anything that could maneuver like that.”
“I didn’t see them at first, then someone pointed and said ‘Holy shit!’ and I turned my head and my God. Just…my God.”
I went back inside. The couple was stricken. They were white as sheets. They had this look on their faces and I recognized it immediately. It was the same as the look on the other students’ faces as we all watched in horror at the live feeds coming from Columbine High School or the World Trade Center. It was the look on everyone else’s faces outside that day. It was the look of finding out you’ve been tricked – swindled out of everything. It was the terror and certainty of finding out everything you thought was safe and normal in the world couldn’t be further from the truth.
Mall security came by about five minutes later to ask questions, but they knew there was nothing they could ask. They seemed even more scared than the witnesses. Everything was fine, they said. The police have been notified and there was nothing to worry about. I didn’t know if they were trying to convince the shoppers or themselves, but I don’t think either was particularly effective.
By the end of the night things had settled down back to normal, as things have a tendency to do. Anyone who claimed to see the UFO’s or had heard about them that day shopped and left, and the panic and facial expressions faded to an ordinary value. We locked up at 9pm and talked about it while we cleaned.
“If I didn’t see it myself…”
“It was probably just some airplanes or something.”
“You never hear about a bunch of people seeing UFO’s in the middle of the day, let alone in the suburbs,” someone else added. “It’s always in the country, so they can abduct big overall-wearing Billy Ray and give him an anal probe.”
We dropped the cash deposit at the ATM and headed out to our cars, and between the front door and our driver’s seats, we all watched the sky and walked just a bit more quickly than we usually did.
