Ask the Author: Carrie Smith
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Carrie Smith
I've only ever told people this story orally and to people I know won't judge me as "out to lunch," but here goes...
When I eleven or twelve--it was a summer in the early 1970s--I lived in a suburb of Detroit. This was a place where very little happened. We spent our summers riding our bikes to the city park to go swimming. One afternoon, I went out the backdoor to get my Schwinn out of the garage. As I approached, I looked up and saw a small, silvery object hovering above the open garage door.
For at least a minute, I stood there transfixed by this object a foot or so over my head. It was about the size of a quarter and somewhat translucent. It did not occur to me to reach up for it; nor did I ever articulate the thought that this was something otherworldly. I simply watched it.
Then, at some point, I called out to my mother so she could have a look. She gazed through the kitchen window, and as she stared out, the small object began to move higher into the air. By the time my mother was outside and standing beside me, the little object was well above me, seeming to navigate purposefully through the branches of our neighbor's tall tree. I watched it ascend until it blended into the silvery overcast sky and was gone.
Only in my mother's retelling did I realize she had seen something spectacularly different from what I observed that day. While I watched an innocuous little disk the size of a quarter, she saw, from the kitchen window, a vast object that dwarfed me in size.
Whose perception was "right"? What might have happened had I not called my mother? Did that event really last mere moments? So many questions come to mind...
When I eleven or twelve--it was a summer in the early 1970s--I lived in a suburb of Detroit. This was a place where very little happened. We spent our summers riding our bikes to the city park to go swimming. One afternoon, I went out the backdoor to get my Schwinn out of the garage. As I approached, I looked up and saw a small, silvery object hovering above the open garage door.
For at least a minute, I stood there transfixed by this object a foot or so over my head. It was about the size of a quarter and somewhat translucent. It did not occur to me to reach up for it; nor did I ever articulate the thought that this was something otherworldly. I simply watched it.
Then, at some point, I called out to my mother so she could have a look. She gazed through the kitchen window, and as she stared out, the small object began to move higher into the air. By the time my mother was outside and standing beside me, the little object was well above me, seeming to navigate purposefully through the branches of our neighbor's tall tree. I watched it ascend until it blended into the silvery overcast sky and was gone.
Only in my mother's retelling did I realize she had seen something spectacularly different from what I observed that day. While I watched an innocuous little disk the size of a quarter, she saw, from the kitchen window, a vast object that dwarfed me in size.
Whose perception was "right"? What might have happened had I not called my mother? Did that event really last mere moments? So many questions come to mind...
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