The Unexpected Visitor

I sometimes hate admitting to my age, but sometimes people change their minds about things, and age is the only explanation. In my case, age has given me the ability to stand back and talk later in life about things earlier in life that I would not talk about. 

When I was 13 and living in Platte Woods, Missouri, there was a tiny forest-like area behind our house. Occasionally deer might come into or near the yard, and we weren't terribly surprised by the occasional raccoon. But it was quite a treat sometimes to go out into that forest, just to think, thanks to a path accessible from the back of our yard.

It wasn't the most well-trodden path but it was good enough to snake into the thick portion of the forest and towards Lake Waukomis, where the less frugal suburbanites lived. Often I went as far as where the path crossed a small stream, which was no wider than four feet or so. To cross it required walking over the stream and walking up to a higher embankment.

Normally, I would go there and not cross to the other side, but one day, a Friday in the summer, I was feeling a little adventurous, and climbed up that embankment, bound for the Lake Waukomis region.

About two minutes into this, I came upon a person of some kind. I say "some kind," because it did not exactly look like a person. The face was sallow, the fingers were elongated, and the skin was lighter than even my own fairly pasty, strawberry-milkish skin. He -- I think it was he -- was wearing weird clothing, which appeared part plastic yet torn up. 

I didn't scream. Instead, I did one of those cartoon double-takes where you sort of jump back, with your eyes puffing up big. I kind of froze there, looking at what I thought was someone or something I should best keep to myself. Hey, I was only 13, a little nerdy, and conscious of how people especially at school wouldn't believe me. 

Maybe -- hard to psychoanalyze a moment like that from so long ago. The closest I could describe this was I felt more embarrassed, like somehow I did something wrong, that something was wrong with me for finding something like this, in a forested area where I wasn't too sure I should go into. I say that, but part of me feels like I'm speculating there, too.

I looked around, vaguely curious how he got here, whoever he was. I found a small stone-shaped thing near a bush that had been freshly broken. It was roughly twice the size my head. (I have a big head.) I was more comfortable looking at this thing than at the man who was sort of dying near me. In this round thing, there was an open hole there that appeared to have a switch inside and a couple LEDs, like what you might see when your airplane flight is landing at night. I looked at that, I think out of a little evasion of whatever accident had happened. 

Then I looked back at the man. What seemed to be fuller was disintegrating. Now that's when I ran. I ran home. The only thoughts in my mind were to stay alive and to say nothing about this. I think I thought I'd get infected by the corpse or something like that.

That night, I had dinner in the family room, watched The Incredible Hulk on TV, and couldn't focus on the story at all. I went to bed earlier than normal, which is not to say I fell asleep earlier than usual. 

I went back to the area a week later and the ball thing had disappeared, too. There was no record of any of this. Dammit -- I thought, though I wasn't even sure of that.

Now that I care less about approval from family or friends, I think I can talk about this sort of thing openly. I don't really have a lesson to draw from it, except to say speak out to someone. It was sort of a dead weight in me, this unspoken thing. Maybe it didn't mess me up, maybe it was a Hmmmm.... and that's it, but in retrospect, I should have spoken about it to someone when I was 13.

At least if it had happened in the first place. Happy April Fool's Day!