Eyewitness Account: First Sighting

Wednesday, November 24: I think my first hint that something had changed was the Breaking News labels on television. I wasn't really watching TV, but it was on and the characteristic red ribbon the network used. My kids were vying for my attention, and the dog was as well. With all the tumult, I usually would have turned off the TV, but I hadn't quite yet.

The sound was turned way down however, and so it took me a few minutes to realize that the talking head news guy was really playing it by ear. The camera kept going from his head to this this gray splotch in the sky and back again. Clearly the cameraman was still using a handheld, because whatever he or she was zooming in on was shaking.

I finally got enough of the dog off of my lap to get the remote off of the coffee table and turned up the sound. The talking head guy was babbling on about "the object" and there were clearly a number of people around him speaking very loudly.

Just as I thought I was getting the scoop, the station cut to the network, with a similar Breaking News ribbon below. I don't recall exactly, but I think it was Brian Williams giving an account. Of course, no one knew what was really going on, so there was plenty of fill in, conjecture and lots of official looking experts giving their opinions.

Since it was the day before Thanksgiving, the big news of the day was the terrible crowds at the airports and on the roads. Most news reports were about how the national airlines weren't cutting it in terms of keeping passengers informed about flight changes etc. I'm sure that most of the airline's employees were still angry over suddenly becoming government employees and when you cross an airline employee with a government employee, the surliness is sure to be rather high.

Similarly, there were lots of protests about the price of fuel. The Greenies were laying down in front of gas stations, protesting the continued strip-mining of our atmosphere by hegemonic oil companies. Their solar clothing made them stick out like sore thumbs, the cloth shiny and bright next to the other protesters there. Of course, there were tons of just regular folks protesting as well. People sick of paying over $10 a gallon for gas. Some moron actually pulled his aging Hummer into a gas station, tucked a rag into it's fuel tank opening and lit it up. That certainly made some news.

As expected, the President was appealing for calm, in his characteristic measured tones. He had aged a lot in the last year or two, his dark hair graying quickly. I'm sure his First Lady told him to color it, but I'm equally sure he ignored that advice. The terrifying events in the Middle East certainly left him sure of his own mind, and equally sure what advice he was and was not going to take. Appearance seemed rather low on the list next to the millions of refugees pouring into Northern Africa, and into the Mediterranean European states that could actually handle any more refugees.

The confusion I felt, perhaps all of us felt, during this First Sighting, was as I remember on the morning of September 11, 2001. Those first reports coming out of New York about a plane hitting the World Trade Center were similar in tone. I remember driving along, my suitcase in my trunk, heading to the airport when NPR broke in with an update that a second plane had struck. My first inclination that there was a logical explanation for the first plane strike evaporated -- the thought that radar had failed, or the plane's guidance system was messed up -- and the realization hit me that we were under attack.

But on this day before Thanksgiving, 2,010 or so years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth, the world changed as it had never before.

I'm not exactly sure when the noise in my family room ceased. Sometime between the jerky camera movements of the local news crew and Brian Williams' creased face outlining what was happening, my kids and my dog directed their attention to the TV set.

When I think of all the major watershed events in human history, it isn't just a matter of which were most memorable (like where were you when you heard Kennedy had been shot in my parent's generation) or which had the longest impact (like the first news of the nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel, or the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings) but which ones CHANGED human history forever.

I think of the death of Jesus -- whether a man, or the Son of God, upon the cross on that spring day in a faraway place, now razed to glass, or the first scribblings of a wild-haired physicist upon a blackboard with his chalk. Or the clank and rumble of the first prototype automobile down a rutted horse path. Or the news from Japan that not one but two atomic bombs had ended a long drawn out war.

Or the first time human beings looked upon the stars and wondered if we were truly as alone as we felt.

On this day, a day before our traditional thanks for all of our blessings, we would never be the same. Our myths, our histories, our legends were all just stories now. With that shaky camera movement, the almost-hysterical voice of the reporter in the field, all of that had been rendered almost moot. Our hubris that we were the masters of all we surveyed, our God-given right to do with Creation as we saw fit, all of that disappeared in an instant.

All changed.

All with the fateful words from a news anchor at a desk in a large city, in a medium sized country, on a rather modest continent in a small world in a small solar system on the edge of a unremarkable galaxy.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the object above us has sent a message. A message of peace. They say they are here to help us. To protect us. To ensure that our world stays habitable for all its residents. They say we are not alone in this universe and they hope we can be friends. Ladies and gentlemen, the question has been answered: man is not alone in this universe. We are not alone."

Photo: © Jeffrey M. Perloff, 2008