I was looking over an issue of National Geographic and was suddenly swept back to about four or five years old…

I had been watching Star Trek re-runs and other space related cartoons and shows. I had spaceship models and other toys in my room. This was part of my play and imagination.

Somehow, I’d gotten the idea into my tender head that I could be, in some way, a space alien or from aliens. I imagined different scenarios for how this could be possible and why I wasn’t being told. I was seriously TRYING to believe this and it had gotten to the point of upsetting me.

Finally, after several weeks, I decided all the evidence was against it and it had to stop. There was no intense physical, emotional, or psychological forces involved to sustain it. There wasn’t the most intense physical force in human existence, at least 10,000 times more powerful than the next most powerful drive, present in the idea. There were no adults jumping in and anxiously trying to reinforce it. I decided to stop, and the whole experience left me with a quite skeptical disposition towards the ridiculous things people will try to believe.

When I was 10-12, my grandparents, who were certainly not wealthy people, had given me a couple of expensive subscriptions to National Geographic magazine for Christmas and birthday. One of the few highlights in the otherwise dreary period in my life was retrieving my latest issue from my father’s confiscation and pouring over the beautiful photographs and fascinating articles. I kept my stack at the ready in the front of my closet for the many reviews. It was all very special to me.

Today, when I see the famous yellow border, a wave of revulsion sweeps over me and I have a vision of the publishers, editors, and journalists being frog-marched in shackles to a large prison cell where they can spend the rest of their lives doing to each-other what they were, with the most vile and evil child pornography, encouraging vulnerable youths to do to themselves.