New Mexico - Roswell

There are not many things that I am frightened of. I have intense dislike for various creepy crawly bugs, namely stink bugs and almost all spiders, and I do that obnoxious “You get away from me you bastard” talking to wasps thing while walking around like I have something crawling around in my pants. But apart from that, I think most things I'm scared of you're supposed to fear - death, bodily harm, a meaningless life etc. 

That being said, I have one irrational fear: aliens. 

My LOGICAL brain doesn't actually think that little green men are at all interested in Humans. The universe is vast and there's no way they find us interesting enough that they need spy on our boring lives and secretly abduct us and probe our sad bodies with advanced technology. 

That. Being. Said. 

GO SLEEP AFTER THIS, KID. 

My mother thought it would be a hilarious way to desensitize me and my sister to horror films by letting us watch the tail end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” one night and we have never fully recovered. 

A few years later, when I was 10, my dad and I went to visit his friend in Arizona, and we stayed in this gorgeous house in the woods with basically windows for walls and nothing at all surrounding us but trees and darkness. They didn't have kids or cable television, so we were limited for choice when it came to things to watch: we had a box set of The Best of Johnny Carson, PBS, and a single film: Fire in the Sky. 

This move is "based on true events" and depicts an alien abduction. THE TRUE EVENTS APPARENTLY TOOK PLACE 10 MILES FROM THE HOUSE WE WERE STAYING AT. 

After that, I did not sleep for many days.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment I guess, I went to go see M. Knight Shyamalan’s Signs  with my friend Rachel at the theatre closest to my hometown. It's a ten minute drive from Rossland to Trail down a steep mountain highway that has several dark sections between the two towns. 

The movie itself was terrifying enough and to this day I can't think about it before I go to sleep or I will be up all night thinking various shadows in my room have malevolent intentions. But to make matters worse, when we were driving home from the theatre, the sky suddenly filled with northern lights. 

We pulled over and immediately got out to look at them, but then we realized the section of road we pulled over at was outside the city cemetery. In the pitch black. With sun aliens trying to steal our essence on the side of the Schofield highway. We dove back in the car a sped home.

This is why Aliens are my one weakness. 

So why, one might ask, am I in Roswell, New Mexico? TJ is a lover of the X-Files and though the thought of intentionally going to the nexus of alien activity in the US terrifies me more than black cats from hell plaguing me in Tombstone, I do have to say that the town of Roswell has made this whole alien thing rather impotent. 

The streetlights are green globes with black orbs for eyes. The McDonalds is shaped like a flying saucer, and similarly the Wal-Mart is green instead of blue and has murals of aliens and flying saucers on its walls. The aliens in these renderings are so cute I am inclined to barf all over myself, and yet the alien-terror has not affected me much. 

We went to the UFO museum today and the only part that got me was near the end they had a wax rendering of the alien body that was supposedly found in the wreckage of the “Roswell Incident” in 1947. Thing is creepy, I don’t care who you are, and if I ever saw one of those little buggers, after the paralyzing fear subsided, I think I might be moved to extreme violence. Fuck them aliens!

No, Ma'am. 

Other than my irrational side coming out in full force, the most notable bit about our stay here in Roswell so far is that it's freaking snowing. I hear it is like a balmy spring up in Kamloops BC, and in the desert...in New Mexico...it is snowing. 

What. The. Hell?

We left Canada to escape winter! This is not right on so many levels, especially as we are sleeping sans plug tonight in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Last night we huddled together for warmth and were still chilly, even under three layers of blanket-y warmth. Who knew roughing it would be applied to staying at Wal-Mart? 

This is also in addition to the van’s fridge finally throwing in the towel so we can no longer keep things cold and fresh. It's hard not take this personally, New Mexico!

In any case, it is nearly time to brave the storm and head back to the van for our sure to be freezing night's sleep. I sincerely hope that the aliens haven’t sent this weather as a decoy so they might look for future probe subjects in a stealthier manner. That would really suck...more than this unseasonal weather.