At the new job I got paired up with a pretty smart guy that I was stoked to get setup with. He seemed to be really into the mission of the organization and aside from being a Berkeley grad (go Cal), he was also easy to talk to and ask questions.
We were riding around in his car, and it was one of the first few moments we had alone, and he got weird.
“Have you heard about the UFO that was spotted over Phoenix a couple of weeks ago?” he asked.
“Um, no…I haven’t. Tell me about it,” I said.
“Well, it was all over the news. A few thousand people must have seen this unidentified object flying over Phoenix.”
“Really?”
“Do you believe that?” he asked.
“Sure. UFO is just an unidentified object in the sky. It doesn’t have to be Martians, right?” I said. Hoping he was on that same page. “There are a few different air force bases in the area…could have been anything.”
“No, you’re right. And did you know that in 1987 there was a triangular set of lights that flew over Phoenix and it was spotted by a ton of people. If you can’t tell, I’m a Ufology nut.”
Well, the nut part was right.
As the day progressed he proved more and more that he was a normal guy. We had a couple of meetings with different people in the community, and he was pretty inspiring the way that he spoke with them.
Then we get into the car for the 6th or 7th time, and we’re both kind of getting tired and he looks at me and says, “Do you believe in Bigfoot?”
And I couldn’t help it. I just laughed.
It was obvious that I had hurt his feelings a little, so I tried to salvage the conversation. “To be honest, all I know about Bigfoot is what I’ve seen in ‘Harry and the Hendersons.’ [which is a kick-ass movie, btw], so I guess my knowledge is limited to fictional accounts. What do you believe?”
I kind of miss my old office…we didn’t have any weirdos. Just a gay guy that pretended to he loved Jesus more than cock, a Samoan cult, a short and stout Hispanic girl that was kidnapped by her father when she was a child and made international news because it was one of the first cases of parental kidnapping, a guy that was disgustingly obsessed with USC paraphernalia even though he never went to USC, and a half-deaf Vietnamese girl that you could talk shit about as long as you stood on her left.
This week I decided to give my moooooola to the Trevor Project. If you haven’t heard of them, they operate a nation-wide 24/7 crisis and suicide prevention helpline for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth. They also run education programs for parents and youth-educators to help them deal with the sensitive subject of coming-of-age youth.
Only the President and state Governors can decide when and how long the flag should be flown at half-staff.
