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Quick! There's an Ancestor Behind You! ... November 02, 2004
i just watched one of those "you'll never forget the people you hurt when you're high" commercials on the cartoon channel. it was the one where the old man keeps appearing all over the place as the girl goes through her day. he's just staring at her. she keeps peering up, looking all scared when ever she sees him. anyways, it reminded me of a wierd hallucination i saw once when i went to see an optional lecture being given by a guest speaker for a class i was in at the time. first, i want to make sure we all understand that i was not nor, at the time, had i ever been under the influence of any chemical harsher than a few shots worth of hard alcohol. at that moment i had been absolutely sober for at least three weeks straight. anyways, so i was sitting about halfway back in the small auditorium waiting for the speaker, who was almost half an hour late, to arrive. i wasn't tempted to get up and leave like some of the crowd had already done because i was really interested in the subject she was going to be speaking on, urban planning. the rumor which was sweeping the waiting crowd was that her plane had been delayed a little. she was pretty frustrated when she finally took her place at the podium. she was breathing hard and obviously a little nervous, stammering her appologies at making her esteemed collegues wait like that. her shaking hands were gripping so hard that her notes were getting crumpled and twisted. i had to turn my eyes on something else because it was making me nervous just to look at her. just then, i saw something strange appear over her left shoulder. it was the disembodied face of an old man floating behind her, looking as if someone had inadvertently stuck their face into the spotlight which was glaring down upon her. i focused on him to keep my mind off of her nervousness, mostly so i could actually listen to what she was talking about. i watched with astonishment as his frail, hunched body materialized slowly. i realized there were a few seconds where i could see the wall panelling behind him right through the center of his chest. his figure was only completely solid for about three seconds. he was asian and had a striking resemblance to the speaker. the word that came to my mind was, "grandfather". i could tell he was positively ancient because he had one of those faces which time had grotesquely wrinkled and pockmarked. his cloths were a bit raggedy but you could tell they had once been very expensive. he looked sadly at the back of the speaker's head for a moment. then i blinked and he had dissapeared. i looked all around the stage for him, expecting to see him shambling along the solid cement wall which lined the back of the stage, but he had simply gone without a trace. the strangest thing was, as soon as he was fully materialized, the speaker paused. she didn't look behind her. she didn't even seem to have noticed anything at all. she just paused to clear her throat. but after this, she was suddenly calm, it seemed. she stopped gripping her notes, stopped stuttering and stopped breathing heavily. it was as if some drug had finally kicked in for her. after this, she was able to deliver what was an informative and confidently rendered presentation. the effect was so marked i was tempted to go up a ask her if her grandfather had come to see her speak that night. but i figured i already knew she would probably get annoyed me for asking such a strange question, such an upsetting question. i mean, i assumed he had probably died a long time ago, anyways.
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