Alright, let’s get one thing straight: I’m not writing this diary because I want to. Weekly reports of our experiences on planet Earth are compulsory, so I gotta do it. I’m required to keep track for my assigned therapist. It’s part of the job. They say it’s supposed to help me “mind my feelings” about your race, which I think is stupid. In reality, they’re just giving everyone that works on your planet the big brother routine. You know, keeping tabs. “It’s for your personal safety and benefit…” Blah, blah, blah whatever. All I know is, I'm supposed to phrase each of these journal entries to an imaginary human and I have to give him a name. So, Johnny, here goes nothing:
My real name and the planet I come from are both way too hard for you to pronounce. You can just call me Reggie from Planet Taco. I chose Reggie because all the dudes on Earth with that name seem pretty cool. Also, tacos are all I’ve eaten here. They’re amazing. I come from a gas giant, so I smoke a ton of cigarettes. Ironically, the mixture of Ammonia, Cadmium, and Arsenic are super healthy for me.
My job - if you can call it that - is to observe you guys and help out if it’s “within reason to do so while maintaining anonymity.” At least that’s what the handbook says. I guess I’m kinda like one of those aliens from that movie “Prometheus,” but a lot nicer. Truth is, I took this gig because it was an Interplanetary Operations job. Where I’m from, these jobs are the bare minimum you can do in life. And since we all have to do something, here I am.
You know, Johnny, I gotta say for a group with so little ability you humans really do work hard. Your success is all you think about. Maybe it’s because our planet’s so far ahead of yours when it comes to stuff like anti-gravity technology and warp speed transportation, but most of the beings on Planet Taco don’t have nearly the motivation you guys do.
I’ll give you a good example: this past week I was observing a few construction workers in a small town. These dudes were not only awake, but already on the job most mornings before your sun rose. I know, right? Crazy. Anyway, one day I heard one of these guys complaining about not having any money and his wife leaving him. Heartbreaking stuff. As he’s talking, his buddy just leaves him on this huge crane all by himself. He didn’t feel like hearing this dude blabber at 4:30 in the morning. Bad idea.
As he sat alone a couple hundred feet in the air, I could tell this guy……you know what, let’s call him Henry. I could tell Henry was thinking about ending it all. I mean that literally - forgot to tell you I’m telepathic. Anyway, the stuff going through poor Henry’s mind was not good. Since he was in such an unstable mental state, I figured I’d join him on the crane. Maybe he’d think I was a hallucination or something. My plan worked perfectly.
I sat down next to Henry and offered him a cigarette. After his initial shock, he took the smoke from me and I lit it for him. He had a bunch of the usual questions: are you real? Why are you here? etc. I deflected most of these, but I did answer one of them: what do you want from me? I told him the truth: my job is to watch over you and, if necessary, provide help in the most clandestine way possible. I told him that the powers that be on Planet Taco thought he - little old Henry - was important enough to keep track of. I said that while he may not believe it, a group of extraterrestrial beings valued him enough to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid - like jump off a crane before sunrise in the middle of nowhere.
You know what this guy did next, Johnny? He jumped. Totally unprompted, this fool flicked his cigarette at me and jumped. And since I couldn’t just let poor old Henry splatter into a million pieces on a lonely construction quarry, I had to jump down and save him. The nerve of this guy, forcing me to do work on a day that should’ve been totally easy.
Fortunately, I had plenty of juice in my warp pack to reach the ground first and catch him. As I held him in my arms, Henry stared at me slack-jawed. And do you know what he said to me next? After all that?
“Wow! You are real!”
That’s right, Johnny. Shock and awe were all Henry could muster after I literally saved his puny little life. I dropped that idiot right on his ass.
“Henry, do better, bro.”
That’s exactly what I told him before I warped outta there.
Since then, Henry’s been a model employee. It seems like his personal life is getting back on track too. He’s a lot more friendly to his ex and he’s even gone on a few dates recently. It’s still hard to believe this guy was ready to throw it all away because he didn’t think he had achieved enough in life. Because he felt like a loser who didn’t measure up to some impossible standard placed on him by a society of people who constantly raise the bar only to point out each other’s flaws - by the way, stop me if I’m getting too personal here.
These days, Henry’s a lot more like me. Relaxed. Carefree. Things come way easier to him because he knows who he is now. And all it took was a close encounter with a being from an advanced species who really, really didn’t feel like working hard one day.
Thanks for listening, Johnny. Talk soon.
Real talk…
Have you ever met a Reggie who WASN’T cool?
Enjoyed his one.How wevirw things matter