Today's Attitude:

[Alien-Dazed/Confused]

The Aliens Must be Crazy
[A little Bob-history and a problem with teacher-student ethics]

There was a time in my life (which I rarely admit to) between 1985 and 1990 when I was a serious UFO/alien freak. I wasn’t just a little bit of a freak, but a lot. I watched all of the documentaries available and as much UFO video I could get my hands on, even keeping track of crop-circle occurrences. In 1989 as the Eastern Communist Block began to fall apart, I began studying physics like a crazy-man with the goal of achieving warp drive or time travel before I was old (30 years old – sorry, didn’t happen except in one of my stories  ). As I dove into relativity, I slowly became painfully aware of the self-limitations involved in Einstein’s version of the theory. At the same time, I was trying to reverse-engineer UFO stuff, but I kept coming to the same horrible realization - I was also figuring out how to fake every single one of the films I was watching. By the time I entered UD, I was fairly jaded toward these ends, but I still kept tabs, and watching with delighted sarcasm as experts on NOVA also were able to reproduce fakes as I predicted – but I figured ALL of them out (to date).

Anyway, my point with all of that – I now (2004) have a student at ITT who believes “the aliens are watching”. He was in my Math I class over a year ago and I always see him in the student lunch-room. For a long time, I thought he was just a very creative person, talking in non-stop metaphors – you know, like that Star Trek The Next Generation episode (“Darmok and Gillard @ Tanagara, on the ocean, his arms wide”, “when the walls fell”, etc), so I played his little game. When he would make an alien or scifi reference, I would place myself temporarily in that state of mind I remember so well and respond in terms of what I uncovered in the late 80’s. Although my information was older than his 20 year old mind contained, I could keep up with his Matrix, X-files and Borg-speak as well as his OMEGA Document #V stuff. Having been disparaged by the Texas A&M campus Hillel (Hebrew Society) for an online relativity article I began to write in ’95, I also understood the feeling of being in trouble by unseen forces that are affecting me, so I threw ambiguous references at him as he threw colorful verbalisms and paranoid thoughts at me.

It is slowly occurring to me that maybe all the other students were right – the guy does talk to himself constantly and has recently mentioned that violence might occur to him within a two-month span from now. Sure we, as Americans, are currently worried about terrorism, nuclear threats, etc but he seems to genuinely believe that there are aliens watching his every move and prodding him when he doesn’t do what they want. Yes, it does sound like some of the Abnormal Psych documentaries I’ve seen as my dad reviewed them in the 70’s and 80’s as well as stuff I’ve seen on TLC.

My Ethical dilemma: I am in pretty deep because of the way I have been the only one who seems (from his point of view) to understand what he is going through – or even talk to. I would like to mention that he does still function, easily passing classes, eating and the basics. It is possible that this is his best/only way of getting attention. However, what I am worried about is that maybe he really does have a deep separation from reality. Have I done damage by throwing odd ambiguous answers to his freak questions? I cured my odd paranoia through extensive study about the phenomena involved, should I encourage him to do the same? I looked into groups that he has mentioned before and it’s pretty dark, psychotic online drivel. My question is, do I allow him, as long as he is functioning normally to develop out of it permanently on his own, or send him to somewhere for psychological help that may inadvertently allow him to revert back later?