"The government would like you to believe that the 1947 UFO sighting near Roswell, New Mexico was an illusion or hoax," Mr. Baker lectured his fifth- graders. It was afternoon on a Tuesday, and the sun smiled through the windows of the classroom, inviting the kids to enjoy the increasingly warm weather of late February. "Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't," Mr. Baker went on. "But one thing I'm sure of. Space aliens are among us, because I have met some."

Alan, who sat between Prunella and Marina at the front of the classroom, quickly raised his hand. The stocky hippo man ignored him and continued with his questionable story. "Back when I was in the Air Force, stationed in the Nevada desert, I visited a secret installation where..."

Unable to endure any more, Alan raised his hand again and immediately began to speak. "Mr. Baker, sir, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, there's no way space aliens could ever make it to Earth. The nearest inhabitable planet is thousands of light years away, and..."

"Don't interrupt me, Mr. Powers," the teacher said firmly and gruffly. "Just for that, you can stay after school."

It was a long, painful five minutes before the final bell rang, and the students began to put on their coats and pick up their bags. Alan didn't rise, but stared somberly at the top of his desk. He felt a powerful urge to pick up an Xacto knife from art class, and start engraving a cartoon in the wood. He pictured a hippopotamus with an enormous head, four arms, and antennae, descending from a pizza-shaped starship and proclaiming to the frightened humans, "I Come in Pizza."

He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder, and turned to see the grinning face of Prunella. "Come over to my place when you're done," she invited him. "I have an idea for our history report."

"Sure, Prunella," he agreed. The class had been divided into teams four days previous, and assigned to write ten-page reports on a historical event of their choosing. Alan was sure that his teammate Prunella had come up with a strange and colorful idea, like "The History of Fertilizer from the Paleozoic to Modern Times". He favored more relevant subjects, but weirdness was the way to get ahead in the topsy-turvy world of Ralph "Half-Baked" Baker.

Soon everybody else had gone, and Alan was alone with the hippo, who laid a thick gray hand on his desk and glared at him. "I suppose you think I'm crazy," said Mr. Baker menacingly.

Only one sentence had been spoken, and Alan already didn't like where the conversation was heading. "I shouldn't have interrupted you, sir," he said contritely. "I'm sorry."

Mr. Baker pretended not to hear the apology. "You thought I was crazy when I told you about the unicorns. But I'll have you know that I've seen hundreds of unicorns. Your friends Arthur and Francine were with me at the time. Ask them, they'll back me up."

"I did ask them," Alan replied calmly. "They denied it."

Mr. Baker slowly stepped backwards until his back rubbed against the chalkboard. "So you don't believe in aliens," he said thoughtfully. "You think we're alone in the universe."

"The chances of Earth being the only planet in the universe with intelligent life are astronomically small," said Alan in a cold, scientific voice. "But according to Einstein's theory of relativity..."

"Einstein, Schmeinstein," Mr. Baker grumbled. "The aliens figured out how to break the light barrier millions of years ago. You've been brought up on Euclidean geometry. You think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But the aliens know that the shortest distance between two points is zero."

"That's crazy," Alan retorted.

"Ha!" The teacher pointed at Alan in triumph. "You're questioning my sanity again."

Alan sighed impatiently. "No, I didn't say 'you're crazy'. I said 'that's crazy'."

"You're talking about eons of scientific research conducted on other worlds," said Mr. Baker in a dramatic tone. "Einstein, Schroedinger, Oppenheimer...they were all clueless imbeciles."

"All right," Alan challenged him. "Explain to me how the aliens got around the light barrier."

"There is no light barrier." Mr. Baker walked up to Alan and tapped the boy's head with his knuckle. "The only barrier is right here."

It was no use. Alan wondered why he had been so anxious to skip fourth grade.

Once his detention was over, he wandered about the mostly empty center court for a few minutes, pondering what to do about his increasingly grating teacher. Noticing that the door to the principal's office was hanging open, he started to make his way toward it, thinking a little talk with his good friend Herbert Haney might cheer him up at least, if it failed to solve his problem.

Poking his head through the doorway, he was surprised to see someone behind the desk whom he had never expected to see at the school again...

"Mr. Ratburn?"

The former third-grade teacher swiveled his pointy nose toward Alan and grinned.

"That's Principal Ratburn."

TBC