THe Stoplight in the Sky

I was on a commercial flight last week to California. The flight was 5 ½ hours from the East Coast. With a little over an hour left, I saw the absolute strangest thing that I have ever seen out of an airplane window (except where the demon tears into the engine in the Twilight Zone movie).

I was looking out of the left side of the plane, just in front of the wing. Actually, I was looking for any lights over what appeared to be a desolate area. Off in the distance, I could see a glow from a city or something pretty far off. I was listening to music, just kind of staring out there.

Some lights caught my eye and I looked at them. Picture this: there are no lights on the ground to give you that perspective of height, but we were at cruising altitude. There are three lights, right, center (slightly higher), and left coming right at us from the left. It looked like seeing an airplane head on when it is on final approach. I had to repress the urge to get out of my seat and run, because it really looked like we were going to get broadsided by another plane (not that running would help you).

The three lights went out from the right to left, 1—2—3 gone. I looked at the guy next to me to see if he saw anything. He wasn’t paying attention and I’m not going to tell him I saw weird lights out the window. I looked back outside. I saw the exact same thing. Lights 1—2—3 gone. I didn’t look out the window for the next half hour.

The flight was uneventful for the rest of the way.

As I was waiting for my luggage at the baggage carousel, the pilot and co pilot were also waiting for their stuff right behind me. I was tempted to ask them “what was that?” Surely they saw it. I opted against it. I figured that they would tell the “men in black” and they’d find me walking about in the Mojave Desert with Anne Heche.

“ Umm, how’d I get here? I don’t know, where is this? Who am I? Who’s clothes are these? Is that a gold plated toilet seat I’m carrying?”