My Stepfather is an Alien

The narrator explains the perspective that Thomas, the new stepfather in the narrator's American life, may be an alien but possibly also a 'worthy' daydreamer!

One last politically neutral fable about embracing family love in all its deformed forms on Earth!

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My stepfather, Thomas Collins, moved from Belfast (Northern Ireland) to Cherry Hill (New Jersey, USA) in the summer of 2021, after the Coronavirus quarantine/tribulation had finally subsided! Thomas married my mother Shirley O'Hara and moved into our home in Cherry Hill (New Jersey). He's a handsome 50 year-old man, well-matched quite seemingly with my 48 year-old mom. Thomas came to JFK Airport via Aer Lingus, Ireland's national airline, and my mother and I picked him up and drove him home to Cherry Hill.

Mom met Thomas on an online global dating site mostly featuring Europeans and North Americans as members! She liked his profile and online demeanor and they began communicating. In one year, they decided to meet and then decided to marry. Thomas is a lot like my mom, but he's much more reticent and a tad eerie. I think my mom likes his sense of humor and cleanliness and sometimes asks him about his opinions on Belfast IRA-Parliament troubles regarding terrorism and retaliatory police violence. She finds Thomas pleasing and offbeat, and I appreciate my stepdad's interest in buying me fun things like electronic keyboards on eBay!

After one year of living with me an my mom in Cherry Hill (USA), Thomas from Belfast (my stepdad!) was beginning to exhibit some strange traits. He liked to wet his morning white-bread with milk and then spread sugar around the slice of bread on his plate before using a straw to suck up the sugar and then finally eating his milk-moistened bread. Thomas exhibited other strange idiosyncracies such as always wanting to wear sandals in July and insisting on cleaning our house windows with soap and water on Saturday mornings at around 9 am. In other words, my Irish stepdad Thomas was rather very peculiar in his specific interests and lifestyle routine precision! As Halloween approached, Thomas wanted to gift balloons to kids in our neighborhood, and he told us that the balloons reminded the kids of the strange haunting by 'specters' during Halloween. It dawned on me finally that Thomas my stepdad was not normal in any way whatsoever!

When Halloween came, Thomas my Irish stepdad decided to dress up as a big fat clown and donned some pretty ornate clown face-makeup for his get-up! Thomas decided to call himself Pennywise and believed he was a rather believable antisocial anarchist clown from hell. I went trick-or-treating with my stepdad that Halloween with some of our neighbors' kids in our community and as the night fell, my stepdad turned to me and decided to whisper in my ear, "I'm an alien; I'm not a human; I'm from another dimension!"

I really had no reaction to my Irish stepdad's strange comment about him beling some kind of alien from 'another' dimension that Halloween Eve while we were trick-or-treating! I just had to wonder what the hell he was communicating! Was this some code-word language to subtly tell me and my mom Shirley that he was some relation or associate of the Belfast IRA (Irish Republican Army) traveling to America for some kind of inter-continental resourcing mission for Sinn Fein and seeking to convey his intention to be cordial and civil to his hosts in the USA? Thomas my stepdad decided to take me to a DeLorean car factory center in New Jersey and showed me lines of DeLorean cars, featured in the iconic American sci-fi adventure-dramedy Back to the Future (Michael J. Fox). Thomas turned to me again and told me that these cars represented the dreams of all of his 'kind' (or species!). It then dawned on me that Thomas my Irish stepdad was telling me that the DeLorean car was a symbol or totem of his 'passport' into our 'normal' dimension of 'everyday' human beings on Earth!

When I concluded in my journal that Thomas my stepdad was not some kind of IRA/government spook but in fact some kind of 'other-worldly' warlock or mystic from 'another' dimension who had ties to other warlocks/aliens on Earth who seemed to share his metaphysical fascination with DeLorean cars, I decided that I'd always relate to my new stepdad Thomas with a sense of equal wonder and respect. If he showed signs of continuing love for my mom Shirley and made our life in Cherry Hill very pleasurable, then it wouldn't really matter if Thomas was a normal stepdad or some kind of 'visitor' specter on Earth. All my mom and I wanted to embrace was a sense of divinity.

I followed my stepdad Thomas one day to work and discovered he was quite friendly with a very attractive young Irish-American redhead woman named Theresa. I followed Theresa after that day and discovered she was the daughter of a wealthy pub-owner in New York and wondered why she was friendly with my Irish stepdad Thomas. Was Theresa an alien like my stepdad who gave my stepdad special conversation or counsel? Was he having a new adulterous affair with Theresa and cheating on my mother Shirley? I continued to follow Theresa for the next 2 years, wondering what was more intriguing in terms of inquiry --- "Is my stepdad an alien?" or "Is my stepdad an adulterer?"

THOMAS: I'm pleased with your mother, Shirley!
NARRATOR: I'm so happy about that, dad.
THOMAS: I'm equally pleased you're calling me 'dad' now!
NARRATOR: I'm happy about that too, dad.
THOMAS: I'm sure you still wonder why I told you I was an alien!
NARRATOR: I was curious to understand and appreciate your meaning.
THOMAS: I'm simply off-center; I'm just not a standard human on Earth!
NARRATOR: I'm sure from your communication that you have friends and confidantes.
THOMAS: I love your mother, Shirley, and consider a valuable part of my life in America!
NARRATOR: Are you taking her back to Belfast with you, dad?
THOMAS: I think we'll stay in Cherry Hill.
NARRATOR: I wondered if you're an alien when you called yourself Pennywise.
THOMAS: The dancing clown on Halloween?
NARRATOR: Yes!
THOMAS: Pennywise is my secret favorite avatar!
NARRATOR: Cool.
THOMAS: Yes, he's like my 'captain' or avatar idol.
NARRATOR: You should write an online short-story about Pennywise.
THOMAS: Maybe I'll do just that!
NARRATOR: Americans appreciate everyday mysticism and ghost-stories.
THOMAS: Pennywise is a strange and other-worldly clown from the underworld!
NARRATOR: I have a feeling we'll get along fine, dad, even if you're some kind of alien.
THOMAS: I'm sure of it now.
NARRATOR: Cool.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)