How We Got Here
A mysterious wreck, a Kansas summer, and friends I never saw again*
When I was a kid, I found the spaceship on which I’d crashed to Earth.
It was summer in Kansas City, Kansas, and I was eight years old. This was the zenith of free-range childhood; almost every day, I left our small green house as soon as I had breakfast and didn’t return until it was time for supper. My neighborhood was kid central – literally every other house had someone within a couple years of my age.
Although it’s decades ago now, I can draw it from memory, using colored pencils or brushstrokes in my mind. I often have. The setting remains vivid and the scenarios are cinematic, like short films I can watch any time. That’s mostly because it was such an unforgettable cast of characters.
Stacy lived behind us in a house with a giant yard and was nearly always the first one to arrive at our meeting place – she liked to sing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” even when it wasn’t Christmas. Brian tried to dig us a hideout into the hill below his house, which we abandoned when we learned we might get buried alive. Andy was the newest kid on the block and the youngest in our group, gentle-spirited but adventurous – his hair defied gravity, rising in a straight column from the top of his head as if it had its own weather system. Chris was the oldest by a couple years and certainly the toughest – he had an air hockey table in his garage and a basketball hoop in his driveway. And finally, Kevin was our source for contraband – once when we were both seven, he sneaked a can of Budweiser, a couple cigarettes and a matchbook from his house, and the two of us shared them in the privacy of a stormwater pipe.
Colorful personalities weren’t limited to those my age. There was an elderly woman up the street with a crow named Lawrence who could say “good night.” An older couple who lived catty-corner from Kevin had traveled the world and their house was like a museum. Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre, who lived across the street from me, invited me over sometimes to help solve puzzles and build bird houses.
Our neighborhood was like one big diverse welcoming family – grandparents, parents and kids.
As for us kids, our territory was The Creek, a natural stream that pretty evenly divided our neighborhood. The waterway was thickly wooded along both sides, hiding all kinds of wildlife and sometimes treasures. We would meet at the spot where The Creek intersected our street and decide our plans for the day – which could be anything from catching crawdads to inventing new games and regaling each other with fantastical stories.
Once, Stacy and I walked four streets over along the waterway and thought we’d made it to California. That’s how far our travels took us. The Creek was our country and it held the secrets of the universe – including a big one, concealed in a grove of trees, that we were about to rediscover.
I can’t tell you what our plans were that day, or why we decided to explore that particular patch of woods. Andy was trailing a bit, likely daydreaming, as Stacy and I entered the thicket.
Sticking out from the undergrowth was something metallic. We started pulling away dead leaves and vines until it was revealed: the chassis of a vehicle, half-swallowed by earth.
The doors were gone. The frame looked like it had fallen from very high up and taken the full force of impact. Rust freckled the iron cladding like constellations. A crooked steering column jutted from beneath what remained of the dashboard. Vines threaded through the empty window frames and all through the innards, as if the forest were quietly studying its machinery.
It did not look like a car. It did not look like anything we’d ever seen. It looked like it had crashed on this planet and broken in half.
The thought came to me in an instant – not as imagination, but as memory.
“This was our spaceship,” I murmured. “This is how we got here.”
Without missing a beat, Stacy stepped toward me, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I’m an alien too.”
There was no hesitation. Just recognition.
Andy emerged from the brush moments later and accepted the truth of it because, of course, he was one of us. The conversation that followed is lost to time, but the feeling is not. We weren’t pretending. We were remembering. And we vowed to keep the secret.
I was true to my word for decades: besides my wife and son, I never told anyone about the spaceship. I don’t know if Stacy or Andy ever did – about a year after our discovery, my family moved from the neighborhood.
I never saw those friends again – except in my fondest memories. It remains one of the stages of my life I miss most.
As an adult, on visits back to Kansas City, I sometimes drive through the old neighborhood. It only takes a minute, so sometimes I circle back for a second look. Like those days of childhood, it’s gone too fast – until the next time I revisit and reminisce.
Just like you’d expect, the neighborhood has changed. The creek has been paved over. Our house was painted blue.
That world seems much smaller.
I still feel like an alien.
*Names have been changed to protect the identities of the aliens.