Monday Memories: Close Encounters of the Kenny Kind

You people are going to have to get used to disappointment if you think my Monday Memories are actually ever going to land on a Monday.  :-)

I must start by saying that when I told Kenny what I was going to title this post, he immediately started campaigning for me to change the title of the post to "Close Encounters of the First Kind" because it would be "more accurate".  When I reminded him that I am not a blogger for a scientific journal, he insisted that I look it up on Google so that I understood what the phrase "close encounters of the first kind" actually means.  As it turns out, there are SEVEN types of close encounters.  Who knew?!  Apparently Kenny!  A close encounter of the first kind is: "a sighting of one or more unidentified flying objects."  Which brings me to my Monday Memory...

To preface this memory, you must understand that Kenny is of sound mind and body.  Well, sound mind anyway.  Well, lets just say he isn't totally crazy.  What Kenny has is, what some might call, an over-active imagination.  He watches too many sci-fi movies and then for the next couple of days lives in fear of what might be out there, or in the deep, or even in the closet.  Nothing ever comes of it, and  it just drifts away like a long to-do list.  Then it's business as usual until the next alien movie comes along to start the cycle all over again.  Given his reaction to things he sees on TV that are conjured up by teams of writers, you can imagine what the reaction was the night that he saw something with his own eyes.

It was a chilly spring night, and Kenny and I were outside in my parents' backyard gazing at the many wonders of the sky with our telescope.  We were young nerds in love... newly married, I think.  I believe Mars was a target that night.  I remember vividly that we found our first galaxy and we saw this cool triangle of lights fly across the sky.

I also vividly remember turning to high five Kenny about this cool triangle of lights only to find myself completely alone in our back yard!

As I looked around for my built-for-hockey, 6'3" husband, I heard him practically shrieking at me from the window to "get the hell inside the house!"  Perplexed, I remember reaching for the telescope to take with me, and Kenny madly whisper-shouting at me to ditch the telescope and get inside.  So, I hustled myself inside to find out what the big deal was.

When I got in the house, Kenny was wild-eyed and frantic.  He ushered us upstairs as quickly as he could and closed all the curtains.  Apparently what I thought was a super-neato-flying-light-thinger was, in Kenny's opinion, a U.F.O. possibly piloted by who knows what.  (Please do remember that he honestly is of sane and sound mind... he's just easily freaked out)

The more he described his theory about this potential U.F.O. sighting we'd experienced, the more weirded out I became.  No matter how many alternate possibilities I suggested, he had fairly convincing arguments for why they couldn't explain what we'd just seen.

So... I started getting dressed for bed.  I put on track pants, socks, a t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt.  Kenny stopped mid-sentence, looked at me, and said:

"What are you doing?"

"Getting ready for bed," I replied.

"Why are you putting on so many clothes?

"Well... because you've kind of freaked me out, so if something is going to show up in our bedroom, I want to be ready to run."

Kenny looked at me with complete and utter terror and said, "Why did you just say that to me?!?!!"  I tried to explain that I didn't mean to freak him out, but nothing I said seemed to help.  Apparently MY job in this relationship is to talk Kenny down to earth whenever we see U.F.O.s, not to join his camp and make him more paranoid than ever.  :-)

I apologized profusely, but seeing as it was about 1:00am, I decided to go to sleep, leaving him staring at the ceiling.

The next morning, as the sun shone through the curtains, I turned over to say good morning to Kenny and guilt instantly shot through my body.  Kenny was sitting there, dark circles under his eyes, wrapped in a blanket with a stack of Archie and Jughead comic books about 3 feet high beside him just staring at me.

He hadn't slept all night.

He'd read every single Archie and Jughead, Betty and Veronica and Josie and the Pussycats comic book that my sister had ever owned and squirreled away in my parents' guest room.  (Editor's note:  It should be noted that this collection was very impressive, and ultimately impressed a Kijiji buyer enough to purchase it from my sister for a hefty sum!)

I felt sooo bad.  However, the good news was that upon making it through the night to greet a new day, and upon seeing that I was awake and hadn't abandoned him for safer pastures, Kenny was finally able to fall asleep.

And so, I tip-toed out of the room, leaving Kenny surrounded by a pile of teenage-girl-genre comic books, snoring away, perhaps dreaming of his friends at Riverdale High.

He's a big chicken, but he's my big chicken and he keeps me laughing.