Close Encounters of the 5th Grade Kind

Excerpt from the forward of my novel- Unpublished. This is a true story. George Lucas and Ridley Scott may have directed some of the best alien movies ever made (in my opinion), but none of it compares to having a close encounter with a UFO at the age of 11. I was in the 5th grade in Overland Park, Kansas. That was roughly 1977. I was with my mother, leaving the Food Barn grocery store on Quivera Road, across from Oak Park Mall. And, yeah, that is a horrible name for a grocery store. As we were driving across the parking lot to head back home, we quickly became aware that all the vehicles in the parking lot had stopped in their tracks. Upon further inspection, not only had they stopped, the drivers and passengers were looking at the sky. Necks elongated, jaws open, looking up through their front windshields. What do you do when everyone looks up? You look up, too. That is when we saw it. My mom slammed on the brakes, and like all the other people in the parking lot, our jaws were hanging open, and our brains were trying to process what we saw. It was a UFO. Now, was it of alien origin? I do not know. The craft was silent and hovering low. Shockingly low since the area was full of people. However, back in 1977, the population was sparse compared to today. The shape was like a wheel with spokes turned on its side. Large plates or sections of very bright lights on the outside of the craft were moving while the inside portion remained still. Or, at least, that was how my brain processed it. It was silent. No noise, No mechanical sound. My best estimate is that it was the size of a baseball diamond. My mom yelled at me with a cracked voice to find the Polaroid camera. I rustled frantically through the glove box, but no luck. So, we sat and watched. I kept looking at the other cars for validation that I wasn't hallucinating. If they were still stopped in their tracks looking up, then we were all having the same experience. Of note, I do not recall experiencing fear. In reflection, it seems weird to me that I wasn't scared. But I wasn't. I was in awe and overwhelmed with confusion. I can explain away almost the entire experience except for what happened next. It left. And, when I say it left, I don't mean we watched it fly off into the night. It went from hovering completely still to shooting away in a tenth of a second. It was faster than anything I have ever heard about on Earth, even to this day. I cannot emphasize the speed to which it exited stage right. And, it was silent. There was no sound. We just sat there in silence for 5 minutes after it departed. My mom broke the silence and said, "That was a UFO. That means unidentified flying object. We don't know what we just saw." She didn't like talking about it. She repeated that statement every time I brought it up through the decades until she died in 2016. Side note: There was nothing in the newspaper about it and no internet back in 1977. If this post finds someone who was in that parking lot, please leave a comment or send a message!! Image by Freepik.com