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child: meemaw, tell us about the The Great Logoff again, pretty please

meemaw: aw, hon, you don't wanna hear about all t—

child: pretty please with sugar on top!

meemaw: alright, settle down. Once upo—

child: don't forget the part with the pair-o-dee accounts

meemaw: I shant

"yeah it's here" you mumble, pinning the phone against your shoulder with your head.

"c'mon, c'mon, you gotta see it, hurry up already!"

"well, maybe you shouldn't have used so much tape on this. it wasn't being mailed across the planet, you know. I only moved an hour away."

finally. it's excised with the help of your old pocket knife. the VHS is a little nicer than the ones your mom uses to record christmas mornings and birthdays. you remember Gary bragging about saving up money from his afterschool job washing cars to buy a whole box of them. its label hastens you to the TV, stretching the phone cord to its limits. It reads:

EVIDENCE OF ALIENS

you stoop in front of the entertainment center and open palm slam the VHS into the slot.

"wild stuff man, wild stuff. won't believe what we saw in those woods. can't believe you pussied out."

"i didn't pussy out. i got my tonsils out. asshole."

"my bad, my bad."

"hold on, tape player's unplugged." you reach down into the dark place where all the dust in the house collects, and yank the cables from the nintendo out from the back of the TV. you wish your parents could get a new set already, half the inputs don't work. you have to do this tedious ritual each and every time you switch between your games and movies.

"it's so hard to reach" you grumble, hand scraping uncomfortably against particle board.

an exasperated sigh comes through loud enough to make you recoil, the phone nearly tumbles to the ground.

"you know your tape player probably has extra inputs you could be us-"

"that's not helping, you know" you snap, annoyance evident in your voice. but your face begins to burn a little when you realize what he's saying is true. okay, it did help. but you weren't about to admit it. whatever. you roll your eyes at the whole thing.

red, yellow, and white jacks finally in the corresponding sockets, remote in hand, you step back and hit play:

"ok it's playing" you say, squinting at the screen.

Time passes, you keep waiting for what you expected to see. A tent, woods, a rowdy group of guys you grew up with, a ufo, little green men.

"well?" your friend asks, "WELL?"

"dude, this is the wrong tape"

"It CAN'T be, what did the label say?"

"Evidence of Aliens"

"are you screwing with me?"

you hold the phone out towards the TV speakers.

"does this sound like aliens to you?"

You hear the phone drop to the floor on the other end of the line. Stomping. A distant yell.

"MA, DID YOU TAPE OVER MY ALIEN VIDEO? MA?"

You stroll back towards the receiver and hang up the phone, snickering. Pretty weird cat though, might be an alien after all.