When my third son was born, I ended up putting my second son to sleep at night. He would crash on the top bunk while the older son slept on the bottom. The two of us would climb up there, and I would come up with some kind of silly song or a story or two to help them shut their eyes and drift off to sleep. More often than not, it seemed to work. One of the stories I recall was about extraterrestrials that were oceanic, terrestrial beings, also known as OTB.

This story was about two teenagers who were best friends—OTB, from a benevolent culture that lived in a solar system on a planet in a galaxy not too far, but not too close to Earth. My son would ask me what they looked like, and I would say they resembled cephalopods, like octopuses and cuttlefish. They were intelligent, curious, and valued wisdom; they had no laws, and they didn’t need them. They liked to have fun and loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and anything and everything that had to do with bubbles.

They mainly lived underwater but could exist anywhere; they could be anywhere and nowhere all at once. Their culture was able to deal with everything with their complete understanding of a Unified Field Theory. My son would ask, “Papa, what is the unified field theory?” I would explain, “Well, there are many things we know and even more things we cannot explain. The understanding of the unified field theory helps put it all together for them.” For instance, these beings could travel back and forth in time, and their knowledge of quantum physics and space-time meant that 100 years could be a blink of an eye for them. They were kind of magical.

“What do you mean by magical?” he would ask, and I would explain something like entanglement, comparing it to a secret friend who knows what will happen at the same time you do. (Physics always allowed me to be really good at getting better at not knowing anything).

The OTB culture stated they had to bring back two or three useful things after going on a mission somewhere in the universe. Everyone in their culture did this at some point in their lives. These two teenagers had to select a planet for their mission and chose Earth for its abundant water. Upon arriving in Earth’s galaxy, they spent what might have felt like 2000 years observing. They mostly observed from the water. Occasionally, they would help with significant events like the pyramids, or they might get sick of the pollution and wear special suits and come up with some plan,,or go off on “field trips”, but all in all, they tried not to get too involved.

When it was time for them to finally go back, they struggled for another 200 to 300 years to decide what to take back to their planet. Finally, they chose two things. The first was the blues and the instrumentation associated with it. The second, somewhat of a throwaway, ended up being muscle cars from the late 60s and early 70s. When the story was told again on different nights, it might be cherry pie that these benevolent teens chose to bring back to their culture. Another time, it might be surfing and whatnot. More often than not, the stories put everyone to sleep.