Eyewitness Account

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Screen on the Green is DC’s foremost opportunity to illegally drink alcohol on the Mall. And there’s a movie, which is nice too.

I want to like it, but usually I spend the entire time alternating between freaking out about insects that hop onto our blanket and sneezing uncontrollably because I’m sitting in the grass.

Unfortunately, my husband loves it, so he gets cranky every time I manage to wheedle my way out of it. This past Monday, as part of some misguided attempt to be a good wife, I agreed to go. Also, they were playing Twelve Angry Men, which I hadn’t seen since high school social studies class. The same teacher also had us watch Anatomy of a Murder because he had been an extra in a ballroom dancing scene. When he screened that one for us, he leapt up during the crucial second when the top of his head appeared on the screen and shouted, “Look! I had hair then!”

But I digress. On Monday, about 60% of the way through the movie, I just happened to look up at the sky.
 
“Um, what the f**k is that?” I asked my husband.
 
He looked up and said, “I don’t know! Wait. WHAT THE F**K IS THAT?!”
 
The people in front of us looked up too and said pretty much the same thing.

Then we all went back to watching the movie, because it was at kind of a good part. We had to wait until it was over to compare notes, so it’s possible a little something got lost, but here's ...  

 

It’s hard to imagine how we could have had such different experiences, but we were both pretty insistent. I’m usually good at googling, but searches of “UFO+DC+screen on the green” and “UFO+DC+alien abduction” didn’t turn up the right sort of stuff.
 
So after all that research, the best explanation I can come up with is that my husband and everyone else were probably abducted by the aliens and had their memories replaced with obviously ridiculous substitute images.
 
I guess the aliens somehow forgot me, but I’m kind of small, so it’s understandable. Also, I think that they may have already decided that when they land and establish alien hegemony, they want to install me as their puppet dictator, and are thus hoping to keep my mind kind of fresh.