This semester, to teach composition, I am using a book by Michael Shermer called Why People Believe Weird Things. It’s about just what it says, if “weird” is aliens and magic and ghosts and God and conspiracy theories and…you get the picture. I’m from the south, which means believing in most of these things is required by my DNA. So basically, Shermer has been calling me a dumbass all semester.

Anyway…

Today, we discussed Aliens and Roswell and the video of what is supposed to be the first alien autopsy ever done on American soil. (You can Google that junk and find it. It’s…yeah ok…weird.) We got to the end of class and I posed the question, which I pose at the end of every class: “Well, do you believe the weird thing or not?”

One kid…a really decent, smart, level-headed kid…looks at me, and in all seriousness says, “Yeah, I believe. I’ve been abducted.”

This is the moment in every teacher’s life when you don’t know what to do. I mean, who am I to look at this kid and say, “No. No you haven’t been.” And how do I even know? So, the room got very quiet. And he thought that was a signal for him to tell us his story.

Needless to say, by the end of the story, when one kid asked if he was high, he just grinned and shrugged his shoulders.

I tell this story because of this:

After class, he came up to me and said, “I never would have been able to tell any other class about that. I told this class because I knew you’d have my back if anyone got crazy and called me whack. Thanks, Ms. M.”

Life Successful.