During the summer between middle and high school – the three months or so when you wait to see if a new and more presentable self will arrive in time to be useful – my two best friends told me they had seen a UFO. Their story was lengthy and involved, with strange and fast-moving lights pursuing them not only in the sky but on the ground. I don’t remember many details, but I remember that they were both fully committed to those details as they told them to me, the next day. We rarely discussed the incident afterward. I more or less believed them.

I believed it because I believed my friends.