SS #104 -- Out of this World

Eight years old, when all the universe was just one big possibility, and everything was a giant book waiting to be read.

Tomas lived in the apartment building next door to my duplex. We were two of only six grade threes mixed into a classroom of grade fours. Since all six of us had different ethnic backgrounds, we had just finished a social studies unit on our respective heritages. He was Spanish. I was Danish. We were both Canadian, and, it would turn out, both curious residents of Planet Earth.

It was a spring evening, and it had finally grown too dark to continue playing two-person soccer baseball. Neither one of us had won, but, then again, neither one of us had lost. (Strangely, it was the same result every night.)

"What's that?" Tomas asked, pointing up to the sky.

My gaze followed his outstretched finger to a set of lights slowly moving across the darkening sky. "That," I announced, "is an airplane."

"No, it's not. Look at the way it's moving."

He had a point. The lights weren't going in a straight line, but seemed to be making an arc. The lights weren't the usual colours, either. Instead of red, or white, or amber, they appeared to my eyes as a sort of aquamarine. But this was Tomas - my next door neighbour, best pal, worst enemy, first love ... and there was no way I was going to agree with him.

"Airplanes don't have that many lights," Tomas argued. "I think it's a UFO."

"A UFO?!" I started laughing and made the outline of a flying saucer in the gravel at my feet at about where home plate had been. It was too dark to see either. "There's no such thing as UFOs."

The lights seemed to be getting closer, though -- or at least bigger. We watched in silence for several long minutes, mesmerized by the strange pattern of colour against the black. We must have made for a strange picture ourselves: two small children, one holding a half-inflated ball, both with heads tilted at the same angle, and neither one moving even to breathe.

"Do you think they'll abduct us?" Tomas burst out. "You're a girl. I'm a boy. It would be one of each. You know -- for their zoo."

A cold chill went over me. That would make sense.

My fear was broken by the sound of my front door opening. My mother was poking her head out, calling my name. It was, after all, dark now.

"Definitely a UFO," Tomas decided as we walked towards our respective homes. "Airplanes don't look like that."

We muttered a bit back and forth for a few more steps, then went our separate ways. I reached my front door at the same time he reached the entrance to the apartment building.

"Hey, Tomas? That is an airplane," I shouted across to him. "I know, because I took one to Winnipeg last summer."

Grinning, I shut the front door behind me. There -- I had played my trump card. Surely he would see the error of his ways -- and even if he didn't, I couldn't hear his response.

(And yet, to this day... I'm not entirely convinced I was right.)