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14 but I assured my friends that the intruders weren’t really bad, merely different from us. During the meetings we held I always included the good news that the aliens appeared to be wishing us well, that they wanted only the best for us. Calm, interested, pleasant. That was always the face I endeavored to present to the gathered crowds. At one of our monthly meetings in 1988, I was, just as usual, assuring the 26 people in attendance that the aliens meant us no harm. “Of course, we suspect that the aliens are using us for experimentation but even so, most of us in the field agree that, in general, they mean well.” I laughed lightly and let my gaze move across the small audience. “They are going to make our world better it seems. Several people who...” A man, a doctor from Dallas, shouted something. I looked at him. He was someone I had just met. He had come with an older person, a person also unknown to me. He looked to be in his early twenties, wearing jeans and what I thought to be an expensive cashmere sweater. His black hair stood on end because he’d just run his fingers through the curly mass. He took off his glasses and spoke again. “Lady, you don’t know one damned thing about aliens.” “And you do?” This kind of thing had never happened in our meetings before. I glanced at our visiting speaker. He nodded and stood. “IT know what happened to me. You want to hear about that?” The Texan was already out of his chair and moving 1 toward me. “Well, if Mr. R. will take over for me, you and I can step into one of the other rooms where we can talk privately.” I gestured toward my office and he followed me, a frown creasing his forehead. I couldn’t understand why this man was so set on disrupting our meeting but I intended to find out. A glance back at the visiting speaker Barbara Bartholic as told to Peggy Fielding