Beware the Pod People

By RICK RYCKELEY
Contributing Writer

Of late, I have been accused of blurring the line between reality and fiction. And if you ask The Wife, that line — the line between what really happened in the past and the memories that I’ve created in my own dark and clouded little mind — has been erased completely.

This story is different. It’s anything but made-up.

When the police officer asked me to explain, The Wife and I were still in a state of shock. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before. After my explanation, the officer gave us a look of disbelief. Can’t say that I blame him, though; I still don’t believe it all myself.

The fiction of today has a habit of becoming the reality of tomorrow, just as what was fiction of yesterday has become commonplace today. For example, the once make-believe comic strip detective Dick Tracy’s famous walkie-talkie watch has now become Nextel, cell phones, and even picture phones. Superman’s X-ray vision that could see through walls has become night vision and the infrared goggles used by the military. These fictions from the past have become good and useful realities today.

But some past fiction has now become a horrible reality. Prime example: the 1956 movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Once merely a B-rated science fiction movie, it became reality at our house last month. Hide the women and children! Gather up the small pets and run for the house! Lock all the doors and windows and pull the golf carts into the garage. The Pod People are now here! They’ve landed in Peachtree City, and pods are now being delivered to unsuspecting families everywhere. Oh, the horror of it all!

In the film, aliens used pods placed around you and your house to change you into something you’re not. Once you became a Pod Person, you had no control over anything. You had to do exactly what the deliverers of the pods wanted you to do. Well, dear reader, once again science fiction has become science fact. Yours Truly and The Wife have been turned into Pod People.

The slow (though not painless) process of becoming a Pod Person started innocently enough while watching television one evening. The Wife and I were enjoying a quiet night at home (with The Boy now off at college, most every night is a quiet night at home). She said with a gleam in her eye, “Honey, why don’t we move and build a house?” Seems she’d been watching those shows on how to sell your house for the last couple of months and knew just what to do.  “The first thing we have to do is get rid of all our junk.” She looked and me and smiled. “Don’t worry sweetie - you’re not junk.”

The Wife knew just what to do, and before I knew it, the pods had arrived. We had pods in the front yard, pods at the top of the driveway, and pods around back on the patio. Instead of taking all of our extra stuff to a storage building, the storage buildings came to us. Now ain’t that convenient. But wait! It gets better.

The deceptively innocent-faced young man delivered the pods, available in many sizes, along with directions to jam — er, cram — er, pack them full of our stuff. Once the pods were full, we were to lock them and call the Pod People. They would come back out, retrieve our pods by use of a giant forklift, gingerly load them onto the back of a long flat-bed truck, and haul all five pods back to the air-conditioned warehouse, where they will be stored until we call for their return.

Each pod came completely encased in its own water proof tarp with a large hinged door on one side. We stuffed our entire life into those pods: couches, chairs, lamps, beds, desks, tools, even a freezer. You’d be surprised how much of your stuff can be crammed into pods. After a week of sorting, cramming, and taking stuff to the dump, our house was finally de-junked and ready to show to unsuspecting buyers. They would have no idea that our house had just been visited by the Pod People.

Early one morning, the Pod People came back and took the five pods away from our house. Then we listed our house with our family friend, the real estate agent. The Wife was right; calling the Pod People worked - we sold our house in two weeks. Now we rent a place just up the street while our dream house is being built. Building a house — that’s gotta be worth at least four or five stories.  More on that in a future column.

The police officer who arrived at our old house was off duty and helping us move into our temporary rental house up the street. He was a friend of ours and wanted to know all about the Pod People. Seems he and his wife are trying to sell their house also, but so far have been unsuccessful.

“We put everything we didn’t want anymore or weren’t using into a pod,” I told my friend as he helped with the couch. Proudly I added, “You name it, we stuffed it into a pod.” The officer stared at me with leery eyes as he looked around and didn’t see The Boy. I told him that The Boy’s really off at college. Although The Wife and I agree that with the low price the Pod People charge for storage, it would be a bunch cheaper just to stuff him into a pod for the next four years ...