 It's called Anachronism of Puffinies and Aliens. In 1998, El Nino was kicking up a fuss in the Pacific, and California is being inundated. The city approves an 80-foot Coca-Cola bottle at the Gise New Ball Park. And state officials are investigating whether or not Kaiser Permanente's refusal to cover the cost of Niagara violates his state law. The human genome project is full gear, and the kids are all walking around with cell phones. No one is ever out of touch. To the English teacher at Lowell, science fiction and fantasy, as I teach it, is a non-academic class. But it's a great takeoff platform for connecting disciplines. These time machines allow us to travel back and forth in time to explore how the past influenced the present. We explore ecology and human values through stories about robots, androids, cloning, and other forms of human engineering. We deal with value systems as we examine possible, probable, and preferable worlds. We discuss and debate economic systems, and above all, the necessity to change as futuristic technology creates an ever-changing world, both in fiction and fact. The UFOs, Space Aliens, and the various characters around Cisco make it real. It is made when a book about by Robert Heinlein, a stranger than a strange man, robbed Anthony to kick off a story. Anthony is a slender Latino surfer. Space aliens, I see one of them all the time. This dude wrapped in aluminum foil was always hanging out on the beach where we surf. Anthony pauses and hums the tune of Twilight Zone. Tanya, a blood Russian immigrant who makes her own clothes and looks like a model of vogue chimes in a chimes in. I see him near the end of California Street. He wears an aluminum suit and a weird aluminum pounding helmet with antennae. Air anecdotes made me curious. I asked, is there any relation between him and the house out there with aluminum foil on the windows? I passed by a house on my way out here. Fong, a self-convessed video game, not perched right up. I've never seen the house, but I've seen that dingy dude. He's tall and thin with a white beard and thin face. He's got those light blue eyes. Kind of looks like those husky dogs. He looks like Gandalf de Grey, a wizard in an aluminum suit. Anthony says, he's scared of stuff out of you if he didn't have that smile. Tanya laughs and adds, he's really got a great smile and walks quickly for an old man. You think he lives in that house? I'm really curious now, I say. I really don't know about the guy you're talking about filming in some more. Anthony responds immediately. We call him aluminum man. He hangs down the beach. One time he even came in to surf with us, but he never took off that aluminum helmet. He's hella good on the board. Did he tell you why he wears the helmet, I ask? Tanya laughs, he's an alien. The helmet shields him from space rays and the messages that tell him what to do, like that funny guy on third rock in the sun. Fawn picks up on the description. Aluminum man tells people he was born here, the son of a space alien father and Earth mother. He says his father went back to the planet on some distant galaxy. I forgot the name he gives it and left him out here to soak up the culture. He says his father's trying to reach him and beam him up to his planet, but he doesn't want to go. The helmet protects him from the beam rays. The discussion goes on and on. Is there intelligent life on other plant worlds? What would they like? Are there people with ESP? Would creatures on alien worlds look human? Do they make babies like humans? A cell phone, and Tanya is apologetic. I'm sorry, you guys, I forgot to turn it off. Her face is red as she fumbles through the phone and the buzzer. Hamid, an East Indian born in Guatemala, this way. Maybe he's related to the same alien's element that invented the cell phone and planted it on Earth. They can monitor our conversations and learn about us. Hamid stops and wiggles his little finger. He'd be redundant as an anachronism. Who would need a human spy if you had technology? He'd probably be afraid they'll terminate him. Sylvia, who is from Mexico, loses no opportunity. These are friend Tanya. I hope they don't monitor Tanya when she calls me. They think we all think about closing guys. Everybody laughs, including Tanya, at the period buzzer to be continued tomorrow. For me, this story doesn't end at the bell. It's about four o'clock after school as I drive along the Great Highway at Ocean Beach. The day is beautiful, the wind is blowing, the sun makes reflecting beacons as it comes off the waves. I think about how my wife wouldn't be home until seven as my car climbs up Geary Boulevard. Suddenly I get there ish to pull into a parking lot just below Suja Park. If somebody asks me why, one of those impulses is as if I'm supposed to do it. I park and climb out of my old dented Subaru and hike across the boulevard between the Cliff House and Louise Restaurant. There's a rutty asphalt path leading down the steep hill between some manzanita trees and baby pines to where the pseudopaths used to be. I'm thinking about the day's discussion. Space aliens, UFOs, aluminum foil, when suddenly a friendly voice slips into my reverie. Nice day, isn't it? I must be dreaming. Guy walking beside me has pale blue eyes and is covered from head to foot in shiny foil. His tall slender tear with a white beard about my age wearing an aluminum foil jacket pants and helmet. The helmet has two antennas coming on his eyebrows. A kid described him and his rap to a team. I flash him a friendly smile and he falls into stride with me as if we are old buddies. We talk about the weather, the water, 49ers, and the history of the pseudopaths. It tells me how the aluminum keeps up the tractors of rays from the space alien father who planted them in an Earth's mother's womb. In minutes we're sitting on the wall staring out at the Pacific and he's confiding me. He's going to stay right here on Earth. He can do more good here than on his father planted because here he just feels more comfortable. It's about five now. The sun is hanging low in the horizon. I see a freighter riding along the water as it approaches the entrance to the bay and wonder where it's been and what stuff it's bringing in. Besides, he smiles, I love to surf. And then the waves of my father's plan. Then as if aren't you, the wind picks up and whips the tops of the waves and the white-capped riders that spin themselves up against the shore and explode into light spraying on the jagged rocks over the both of us. There's a sudden sound of laughter behind us. He and I spin around to see three kids chasing after a rubber ball across the broken cement where in the fifties people still warmed themselves in the mats. 30 or 40 yards behind them, a man and woman came into view. They are two walking as one, loving in grace. They stare tenderly into one another's eyes and glide toward the wall where we are sitting. The woman is slender and tall, wearing jeans and a red square shirt. The man is a few inch tall than she is, is hidden, neatly combed and lacquered into place. Approximately, the man reaches in his jacket pocket and pulls out his cell phone. He flips it over and begins talking to an unseen somber. The girl tenses in his arms. Her jaws tighten as she reaches up and yanks the phone from his hand, runs purposely through the wall, like a quarterback in the last seconds of a close game, spirals the phone up and over the rocks. The phone hits the water, surfs to the break of a small wave and sinks. Time stops. The man looks back at her in surprise and anger. I'm thinking, you better do the right thing, buddy. You're all romantic riding on this one. He breaks into a laugh. He shots against the wind. I'm sorry, babe. He really looks contrite as he opens his arms and warps toward her. I think they've been through this one before. She meets him halfway. They hug and kiss. The scene is sweet and schmaltzy. I turn to my left and aluminum man is gone. I look around the whole area, but he's nowhere to be seen. As I hiked back up the hill toward the street, I keep looking back. Wow, that was strange. I think that was strange. I think as I drive home past the house with aluminum foil on windows, the next day at school, I tell the kids about my adventure. They don't seem too surprised. Anthony tells me, that's where he usually hangs out. He and his laughs and goes theatrical. I told you, it was a cell phone. He had an epiphany when he saw it in the air. He ripped off the suit thingy. They don't need them anymore. And then they beamed him up. The class breaks into laughter. We've created a great deal of smilishness story as we discuss epiphanies and acronyms, aliens of the space kind. Now what happens is we do a thing about betting whether someone's gonna see him again and somebody's gonna put a quarter of each into a pile and so we made a little money. They caught a viewer of this alien. So to me, science fiction and also I taught a class in myth and epic. And those classes were really good in terms of getting the kids into folklore and mythology and again, the thumbnail sketch problems. And I really think that a lot is lacking from schools and one of the things is lacking is that kids in class don't get to know one another. And so one of the things I gave them was a test at the end of the day. They had to describe a student and where he came from and a little of his story and I had to catch his story. Now, I could go on if people wanna get some more or I can stop. Okay, let me have a seat back here.