The Alien Among Us
Ladies and Gentlemen, after thirty-five years on this planet, someone has finally told me the truth. After one too many caffeinated Chai teas my mother told me the reason why I haven’t been able to find a nice bloke; it is because I am an alien and I’m on the wrong planet. She hasn’t lost her marbles, (well, not yet anyway) she honestly believes that I Am Not Of This World. The conversation didn’t start out this way; it began with my lamenting my latest relationship disaster and how I am destined to spend the rest of my life with a drooling twenty pound ginger cat with a bad attitude as my only companion, and it ended with her telling me that E.T. was most likely a relative of mine.

“You have to admit, Anna, it does make a bit of sense.” She said in that chipper Yorkshire sharp-as-diamond way of hers, “I imagine you were flying around in space somewhere; you were supposed to go to some other planet and you got lost along the way. You’re terrible with directions, you know.”

After having said this she went on to explain everything that she thought was odd and alien-like about me; I have to tell you it was a very eye opening conversation, there’s nothing like finding out that your mother thinks you’re an alien to put things into perspective. So let’s just go with it shall we? Let’s just enter my mother’s slightly off-kilter mind and examine the reasons why she would think her offspring might belong on another planet with other giant, rubbery, one-eyed non-humans with no sense of direction, instead of here in the bosom of her so-called normal family. She began by telling me that, as a child, I would crawl on top of things (counters, stairs, etc), not see the end of them and fall right off. She simply thought that I would grow out of it, but by the time I was thirteen and still doing it she began to get worried. She also told me that I had this idea that I could walk under water and had somehow managed to nearly drown myself in a lake. I do remember this unfortunate event, and in my defense I have to say that I was totally in control. I simply decided that I was going to walk across Red Deer Lake, what’s so weird about that? She then reminded me of the knitting needle incident, where I was being chased by the Demon that she insisted was my sister and somehow managed to get her knitting needles stuck in both cheeks just inches below my eyes. The knitting needles not only missed my peepers, they didn’t even break the skin; the only reminders I have of the incident (aside from a slight twitch when I see a pair of knitting needles) are two the two dents in my face that look like dimples. My mother seems to think that my eyesight was saved because of my most likely rubbery blob-like ancestry, and that I should feel very lucky that I have these scars to remind me that I have to be careful on this planet.

Lucky? How can I be lucky when my own mother thinks I am so odd that she has to use the excuse that I am not human to explain away the fact that I am hopeless at relationships? I realize that I have always been different from my sisters and mother physically, one need only look at any family photo to understand that I am the Gulliver among the Lilliputians, and I do tend to think a little differently from them, okay, a lot maybe. So what if I believed I could bend things with my eyes? And that flying thing I used to do off the roof of our shed in the backyard? Come on, I didn’t actually believe I could fly; I just did it for fun and, you know, practice.

So if I’m an alien, how does that bode for any future relationships? What do I do? Do I just come right out on the first date and say ‘Just so you know, I’m an alien. I’m just telling you now so that if you wake up one day in the future and turn over and I’ve suddenly turned into a rubbery blob-like creature, you won’t be surprised.’ And do I risk getting pregnant? I mean nothing is likely to scare a man more than being presented with offspring that has gills. Or do I stay away from relationships all together? Impossible. I’m too much of a romantic for that to happen. So I suppose I will just have to wait until some clumsy directionless man gets up the courage to come out and admit that he’s an alien and comes knocking on my door, until then I will just have to continue conversing with my cat.

Judging from the way he acts, I’m sure he’s from Jupiter.