3rd Grade Blackout Part II

3rd Grade Blackout Part II

After a few weeks of the original post sitting out there, while I've been working on getting our community connected to the full scope and thread of influential social media sites so as to be able to start getting regular and varied postings established for weeks at a time, I think it's now become the moment to finish this first of what I intend will be many conversation openers.

When I decided to start with this memory, it was because it's the first, and perhaps most innocent, example of a truly fuzzy memory.

If you don't believe a word of what I think I did experience during my missing recess period, I wouldn't blame you one bit. If you DO believe it, perhaps it's because you now realize perhaps you experienced something similar. These are the kinds of things I'm hoping others will find in themselves to share with us all.

Either way, what I'm finding as I scour my memories for all the events I can remember, enough to tell with as deep honesty as I can, and share them in a way that doesn't bore the hell out of us all, is that although most recollections I have don't share this 'missing time' concept, all of them are profound enough to explain my shaping and evolving viewpoints.

To me, the strongest point of this whole experience is to let go of our assumptions - evaluate them and understand them and realize we really hold onto a lot of ideas we've forgotten to question in a long time.

I question what I'm about to share. Whether it happened at all. I cannot question whether the class decided together that I was outside the play area when I shouldn't have been, but I do certainly believe what I'm about to explain that my memories tell me took place instead, is dubious.

This is, in retrospect, either a grand display of how much my 3rd grade mind had already been taken by fantasies like those to be found expressed in the Twilight Zone, and some further introspection confirms that there were already a lot of those ideas bounding about my skull by then and who can really say if I was inspired by such media or if these kinds of stories instead inspired the original authors and these experiences were in fact real and played off in such scripts as 'fiction'.

Or perhaps it is a display of how greatly I resent, logically, the capacity for an entire group of others to disagree with my memories that I filled this in later.

As I wonder all these things, I also must suggest this could be the birth of narcissism, and I realize there's an incredible parallel here to a far more meaningful and deeper situation I'll explain far down the road from now. One too dark for diving into immediately.

The biggest question I have is 'how much can I trust' this memory to be real despite the classical mental fantasy it would seem to represent? Or is it a sign of potential psychological issues like bi-polarism or schizophrenia? The idea that I'm admitting to the latter in a public frame is obviously uncomfortable.

Anyhow, I do want to swear to something I strongly feel is true about this part of my childhood story - I'm NOT telling you this so that you'll think anything in particular of me. I'm not trying to validate anything about being special over and above anyone else, not trying to just 'get attention', not trying to vie for power. Many will probably disagree.

Obviously, as I am a founder of a community, I think this is going to be the first assumption any rational person will make. Rael, of the Raëlism cult/religion pulled this sort of tale as well, and I'm not trying to leverage this to the same conclusion such as to form a cult, so much as to invite the commentary I know is coming from more rational folks.

I'm not interested in appealing a new worldview to sheep that aren't interested in exploring their personal views to understand where they've landed in their assumptions about the world so far and why.

So, again, in summary, this is probably all horse leavings. Take it as you will.

~~

So what happened in the 15 minutes in question?

Well, many years later it started to open itself to my mind and feel like memory rather than make-believe though I do understand that the scientists say that memory and creativity happen in the same parts of the brain.

Now, I'm not going to say it was Aliens I encountered. But it was Aliens. (The classic reference to the Ancient Alien meme that goes around is intended here.)

I WAS standing at the fence line. I WAS curious about what lie beyond the grassy hill and the oak tree. That's my nature, to always wonder what's over the ridge past the boundaries.

And as I was standing there wondering, I was met with the shock of my life as a flash of silver fell from the sky just over the hill. Like a meteor without the ensuing fireball surrounding it, and far more under descent control. Completely silent, a little wobbly which made it look honestly a little silly and harder to believe, but shockingly close, and as a result, very difficult to gauge the size of. The kind of thing to swell a child's curiosity past the breaking point immediately.

I believe I looked around at the playground, wondering if anyone was paying the least bit attention to me. Why would they? Nobody really cared I existed at all was the main thing I'd come to understand so far.

Actually, despite feeling like I HAD to understand what I'd just seen, going to investigate was not even under consideration - I was a pretty rule worshipping clean cut kid as crafted by my parents up to that point. I wasn't about to break the sacred rules no matter how unusual the thing seemed. I was already questioning if I'd even seen it when...

A man in a black, leather, trench coat, strange for the upper end heat of the day, clearly a poor choice for the weather, in a black wide brimmed hat, rimmed with teeth, and if I'm not mistaken, holding a walking stick, appeared at the top of the hill.

It was one of those moments where you look elsewhere then back - and there he is.

The man was no so far I couldn't reach him and get back but I was, as I'll explain in a future tale, well indoctrinated already to believe in 'stranger danger'. So the last thing I was going to do was to go to him.

But he was looking at ME intently. And I didn't get the feeling it was just because I was the one standing at the gap in the fence or the only one really taking notice of him. He was looking very directly at me as he reached out and beckoned me to come to him.

I can't, my face expressed in return to his gesture. I think it was limited to expressions as we had a communication in clear words without saying anything verbally. I remember even saying under my breath, "I'll get in trouble."

The words were in my head in return, loud and clear, "I promise it will be OK. You absolutely have to see this. We've come a LONG ways to be here and its more important that you come and see. You cannot imagine how important it is."

Somehow, I believed. Somehow that complex message came through without him being in hearing range. Somehow it made... sense, despite not making any sense at all.

I looked back again and felt the urgency in his summons pulling at me. Nobody seemed to take notice as I slipped away and ran, because I understood my time was very limited before the bell would go off and I would have to be back and lined up for entering class as soon as that bell rang.

He turned and walked down the hill behind him and it was a relief that he was already respecting that I'd need to stay out of sight as much as possible.

As I passed the ridge, I gasped at what I saw. It was hard to look at directly, and I felt it was because the thing was so reflective of the sunlight that it was nearly blinding.

At the time I didn't think of it as emitting light, but perhaps it was - so brilliant was the shine and sheen on its clearly aluminum or silver surface. Although I could hardly look directly at it, the shape appeared to be have an egg-like center surrounded by a disc, set down upon a tri or quad pod in a way that gave it a toy-ish appearance, with a hatch opened from its central bottom. A flat ramp opened to the ground from there, no stairs.

The craziest part was how small it looked, and in the way it was situated between hills, it could not have been an illusion of depth. It really was small.

I glanced back at the man, who had thick facial hair carved into a moustache and goatee with gray streaks throughout. He seemed to 'get' my question before I even had a chance to ask, and answered verbally, "Yeah, it's actually larger on the inside than it is on the outside."

"How?" I asked.

"It's one of a number of things I'm actually still in the process of understanding. It's a mind-bender for sure but there's a lot of that kind of thing where these guys are concerned."

As he said this in his fatherly way, I think it was three short, wiry, large headed creatures descended out of the ship. They looked to be wearing zip-up onesies made of aluminum sheen similar to the craft itself with large helmets that had black, impenetrable glass shields over their faces. Nothing was in their hands but they did have little belts without memorable buckles.

They had impossibly thin arms and legs, and waved at me with what seemed like a strange gesture or perhaps they really only had a thumb and two fingers.

"Do you know who I am," the man inquired with a hand friendly placed on my shoulder that for some reason didn't feel threatening in the least. He crouched, and I recall him going to a knee.

"Me from the future?" I asked.

He laughed. The little guys laughed or looked like they were laughing silently. It was as hard almost to look at their reflective bodies as the ship but it could've been how close they stood to it, away a few paces from me and the stranger.

Turning back to them he pointed his hitchhikers thumb back to reference me and said, "See, I told you he was clever didn't I?" At this they nodded.

"They wanted to see you," he explained.

I asked why and why he was here and how he came to be with them.

He replied, "You won't understand for a long time, but let's just make a very long story short," then he got a serious look on his face as his gaze stole my eye contact. "You're one of a number of key people around the planet that, well... save the world - In essence. I mean, nothing is destined for sure but at least in my 'timeline', that's how it turns out."

"What do I DO to make that happen?" I asked.

"Well you're asking the right questions," he said, "but I really can't tell you all that much or it won't actually happen."

"Why are you here then?" I asked. "Are you here to let me know something to do or not to do?"

"No, none of that actually. The problem is, if I told you the horrible mistakes you'll likely make, all the things I terribly regret to avoid, and really much of anything, you'll probably never become the person you're meant to be. And that would be far worse than the mistakes you make no matter how much you might wish to take them back." His face was written with pain clearly as he explained this, his age showing through the wrinkles and regrets clear.

"Then why bother if you can't warn me or help me to avoid what you wish you wouldn't have done? Why visit me at all?"

"We wanted to see who you were, what I came from. I couldn't resist the offer they made." In the background the little beings were wringing their hands together like they were looking at some kind of celebrity.

"You can't tell me what I do in the future to have this kind of - attention?" I had grown comfortable understanding that we couldn't quite directly communicate but my brain was aware there was a degree of observation on me within and without that I couldn't quite 'grasp' or reach back out to intentionally. The creatures seemed super friendly though and I smiled and waved back.

"No, not really, unfortunately," he answered. "Again, destiny isn't automatic and if I say too much here I'm probably going to interrupt what you do to help things in such a powerful way."

"And again, no warnings, not even one?" I asked again.

"No, really, I'd give you a few key ones but..." it was clear he REALLY wanted to warn me of the worst to come, "all I can really say is, just be yourself. No matter how tough it gets, don't give up, just keep going, just keep having faith in you. You're really not like everyone else," he said pointing back over the hill. "You're different and you know that much already. And that's going to make it hard on you. But just being you, us, is what's going to make it all work out. It's cliche, I know."

"Cliche?" I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

"You know what the worst part of all of this is?" he asked me.

I shook my head, a little scared of what he would say.

"You won't even remember a bit of this until much later in life, AFTER you've made the mistakes I'd most want to help you avoid if I could."

It struck me he was there on his own aside from his three little companions.

"Good guys. Life got a lot better once they showed up. We're still making friends here but I've really enjoyed getting to know them. And yeah, there's," he chuckled again, "quite a bit I could say about 'companionship' and so on."

"But you can't." I said simply.

"Exactly." He sighed. "Well, ok, you'd better get back now. Time is funny but it takes a lot of complex technology to bend and reshape it and I don't understand it any more than I understand that it's a lot larger inside that little saucer than it is on the outside. The bell will be ringing soon and I'm sorry for what trouble I will have brought you but, like everything else to come, just keep your head up and know you are different for a reason and again, it's all going to work out just fine in the end."

He put his hand on my shoulder and walked me back over the hill as I waved goodbye to the three little ones, who were probably no taller than I was at the time.

"Now run down there, go, hurry!" my future self insisted.

So I did and as soon as I jumped and landed with my foot firmly planted in the mud in the gap of the fence, a sound hit my ears like a breaking of a lightbulb and I then wandered over to the swing and put my belly down onto it and lightly swung as if I was flying. Already, I had completely lost all recollection of the events.

The bell rang, and we all ran back to class. I wondered why I felt anxious, a little rubbery, like something very strange had just happened perhaps, but that was the only awareness I had that something was amiss. We all peacefully funneled back into the classroom and took our seats as I caught my breath from the run to the door. Nothing unusual on my mind. Nothing to warn me.

~~

I have on many occasions told people ever since, that somehow I had a strong feeling that I was here to 'save the world', and since this moment, I felt a nebulous and shifty flickering memory of these events may have returned like it wasn't odd at all.

At times, perhaps the whole memory would surface and I'd chew on it again, only to forget as soon as the stillness of the moment broke once more, but when I began actually REMEMBERING it, in full, I cannot fully say.

I don't recall imagining or inventing such an experience, even to consciously patch over the 'blackout', and even now it feels almost as real as any other memory - the details are quite prevalent in my mind, though blurred a bit by the brightness of the sun's reflection or the craft's emitted glare, or both.

What does not escape me is how powerfully this event could just be imagined to help bolster a terrifically insufficient self-esteem, driven by years of crippling ostracization. A powerful fantasy image to make for a band-aid to assuage my incapable self-assessment capacity, and the damage I caused myself socially by not being able to effectively blend in and just be part of the group, making myself invisible like just about everyone else did.

I certainly spent far too much of my life giving the biggest damn about the opinions of others and maintaining a strong exterior locus, as they call it when your self-perception is given to others to craft by their own opinions.

Yeah, there's a lot I would say to bring me down to Earth if I was sitting in my own therapists chair. I'm sure there are a lot of such remarks I would hear like it from commenters who would wish to insist that's all this really amounts to. The same kinds of things you hear the skeptic insist of abductee stories and so on.

Just a story I made up to feel special in a world of billions of not special people, or equally special people as one another. I wonder if what I'm doing now to relate these stories of my life is HOW I 'save the world', or if I've just given myself a ticket to thinking anything I do might accomplish that.

All I can say is at this juncture, I look around at a world that certainly seems in need of saving. And it's just my nature to want to do what I can about that, which to think a community like this could make much of a dent is probably the most arrogant thought so far.

As Slim Shady sang, "Am I NUTS? NO! I'm insane!"

Anyhow, I'll turn myself over to the wolves for this one from here and I BEG you to actually let me have it.

Or if YOU have had any kind of similar fuzzy memories, hopefully I have made it easier for you to want to voice them yourself. You certainly know that if you do, you have an ally here in the community that would stand up to your right to be considered as possibly telling your truth rather than making it up for attention.

Sometimes you don't want the kind of attention you get from the truth. That much is clear.