Saturday, October 27, or How I Saved the World

                Nepal wants to give me a medal now. Nepal. Can you believe that? I can’t. I keep trying to turn all these medals down, but people keep trying to give them to me. That sounds terrible, like some whacked out humblebrag but… ugh. It just makes me sick to my stomach. Nepal should turn their attention back to Mount Everest, or snow, or whatever they usually focus on in Nepal. They shouldn’t be turning their eyes on me. Nobody should. It’s too embarrassing.

                The government agrees with me, at least. When I told them the story, one of the agents dropped his sunglasses. Another excused himself from the room, thinking he could cover his laughter before he lost control in my earshot, but I’m pretty sure the whole compound could hear him in the hallway. Oh yeah, they interrogated me at Area 51. Did I already say that? It’s pretty fitting, if you ask me. The ride there was super cool, though, I’ll give it that. I had never been in a helicopter before. I probably never will again. I’ve never felt sicker in my entire life, not even that time Dad and I were out in the skiff and we hit rough water and I puked off the side of the boat for almost five minutes straight.

                Anyways, like I said, it’s such a relief to know that my own government thinks I’m right. Well, partially. I still have to take all the credit for it, but I get to tell a rousing story about bravery and honor. They’ve also made sure that one of the agents is there with me for every media interview so they can stop any questions that might blow my cover by yelling out “CLASSIFIED!” and smashing the cameras. Or so I assume. They’re there to stop any wandering questions, anything that I can’t answer with a smile and an “I did it for my country, ma’am.”

                I’m supposed to tell them that I knew the aliens were coming my way. They had landed in Northern California and were making their way across the state, so, noticing they were headed straight for my hometown, I prepared myself for a war. Somehow, people seem to believe that beanpole me with glasses and too-long hair is both nerdy enough to figure out the alien’s plan and strong enough to take them on single-handedly. The story says that I had seen the news reports and knew that they were landing all over the world, terrorizing citizens of this big blue orb we call Earth, and I knew that if one of us could fight back, we might stand a chance.

                They say that I cornered the aliens in an isolated area in the woods. They say I had guns and knives, rocks and firecrackers. They say I managed to kill three of them, that I drenched myself in their blood (ew) because I knew they would see me as insane. They say that the aliens fled back to their ship, metaphorical tails between their literal flailing tentacles. I have to admit, the last part is one hundred percent true. Everything else is warped. I barely watch the news, so I didn’t know that other countries were having their own too-close-encounters of the third kind. The touchdown in California had only happened a few days prior, and my mom was the one who clutched her jacket a little tighter and told me to be safe every day. I had no idea they were headed this way, and I certainly never intended to fight them.

                And… I didn’t fight them. Not really.

                I was practicing when they came out of the woods. I’m getting pretty good at playing that one hit song from that 2004 Broadway show that everyone talked about for three months before they forgot about it. And of course I play far, far away on the hiking trails that people rarely climb. Not only do I need the space, but I need the privacy. I mean, come on. Not many people can tolerate unicycles, accordions, or harmonicas. Even fewer can tolerate all three at the same time. So naturally, I didn’t expect anyone—alien or otherwise—to come out of the trees. I didn’t expect all six eyes of each alien to roll back into their blobby magenta heads, and I didn’t expect yellow goo to run out of what I later discovered were their ears.

Really, I barely saw them at all. I only turned around because I heard them screaming in pain. They scared me so bad, I wasn’t scared at all; I even wheeled towards them, tooting a little on the harmonica because I forgot it was in front of my mouth. They reeled back, screaming, throwing their tentacles in front of their faces as they called for their ship to save them. I guess I was a terrible enough sight/sound to send them crying back home to their mommy, because they all left after that and nobody has seen them since.

So that’s the honest story of how I saved the planet. Only me, my parents, the United States government, and an entire alien race know what happened that day. But I have the Presidential Medal of Freedom now, so that’s cool too I guess.