Little Green Perverts

I was born in the former Soviet Union, a fascinating place, a nation of diverse cultures, industrial supercenters, tsarist palaces, and vast frozen tundra. It was a nation which was, like most everything else that exists in the universe, deeply misunderstood by the typical American. It still is. So I’ll take a moment clarify some things about it my nation and its people.

1. Most of us weren’t and aren’t evil
2. Not every Russian was or is a communist
3. Unlike what you see in films, we mostly speak Russian rather than English with a Russian accent.
4. Also unlike portrayed in your movies, we could easily have killed Rambo in real life.

Now that we have those out of the way, there came a point in my life when my family decided to leave for the United States. The United States was a very different place. Before living in the states, I had never heard of space aliens. There wasn’t as big a sci-fi culture in the USSR. I hated the idea of space aliens when I first heard of them, or rather saw them on TV. They were ugly, they couldn’t talk (or didn’t), and they strapped women to tables for some reason. I was still too young to understand the concept of scientific experimentation, so I figured their reason for probing people was that they were perverts. Even though I was never a woman, those bastards on the X-Files gave me nightmares on more than a handful of occasions.

Space aliens became something of an enemy, and there are two widely distributed bits of advice given out to those who have enemies. The first being, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” When I went to the bathroom, my friends would wait outside for me to finish, so for my enemies to be closer, they’d have to watch me pee. Clearly whoever came up with that rule was never the enemy of perverts. Needless to say I had to ignore that rule; I would have to make up for it by going overboard with the second rule, specifically, “know thy enemy.” So that’s what I did. I scoured my school’s library for books on aliens, UFO’s, abductions, and the like. I read up on bizarre incidents, saw hundreds upon hundreds of out-of-focus photos of flying saucers, and watched History Channel documentaries. There are also occasionally documentaries about sex toys on the History Channel that I’d watch, one was part of the series “Modern Marvels,” but I won’t get into that on this occasion. Thereafter I joined an online forum, to discuss space aliens with other people. There was no way those little dudes were going to get me off guard.

A strange thing happened though as time progressed. Despite my enemy being in movies, on TV, in books, and in the minds of countless people around the world, I had never encountered them personally. Around when I started middle school, I began to seriously doubt they would ever come. The literature became less interesting; people’s personal accounts became stupid and laughable. I guess after expecting a huge showdown with the little green men, and them never materializing, I gave up. But not without taking a lesson with me. I learned that blind fear can lead to a waste of time and resources. While the other kids, the cool ones anyways, played sports, dated, and did drugs I was busy reading about Roswell and crop circles. It’s just that I arrived in the United States, and I tried to fit in. The United States was also like that you see. It too has blind fears, including that of space aliens among many, many others, and it too spends its time and effort trying to prepare for a great confrontation that won’t come. Possibly some day it will likewise come to find that maybe little green men don’t want to watch America pee.