Life is stranger than fiction

The year was oh I am not sure of the exact year. It was the 80's and I was a kid. The summer night was as the norm for NYC hot, sweaty and uncomfortable. Tension was thicker than normal because the Yankees were trailing by one with bases loaded 2 outs and the next at bat was known to choke. We lived on the second floor of a pre-war apartment building. Our building was located on an Avenue for those who don't know NYC avenues are longer than city street.

Not wanting to torture myself I joined my sister who is a year younger than me on the balcony fire escape. Derek the son of the family who we shared the fire escape was already outside with his dad Eugene. Eugene had decided that to protect his health he would skip the rest of the Yankee game so he angled his TV so he could sit on the fire escape and pretend he didn't care one way or another.

Derek, my sister and I were joking, goofing and clowning around, Derek became serious and said it wasn't fair we had sisters and he was an only kid. I thought he had it the other way around he was lucky to be an only child.

Derek insisted that I admit that having sisters was fun and of course that left me with the only response of a bratty snotty kid. I told him to leave me alone and turned my back to him and my sister. 

Annoyed and peeved at first I didn't register that Derek, Wendy and Eugene had stopped talking. Because I was the proud owner of what kids at the time called coke bottle glasses it took a full minute for my eyes to process what I was seeing. Yes, it  was a group of people, and then the group swelled in size.

Soon it looked like a parade only without floats, balloons, bands or a purpose. I laid down flat on the fire escape and shoved my head through the ladder. I was only about 8 feet above the people walking in the street and I caught snatches of conversation:

"I have never seen anything like it"
"I have been following it for 10 blocks"
"Where do you think it is going"

Not daring to move to hear more I used my foot to nudge my sister, thinking that as always she was missing out on something important because of her foolish games.

I poked again, nothing. A third time I poked kicked, exasperated. No reaction at that point I was angry. I sat up, Eugene, Derek and my sister mouths hung open, their eyes were glazed and turned up. I followed the line of sight and was confronted by three massive airships. It couldn't be real, airplanes make an awful racket, I know because our section of the city was a busy "flight high way."

My mom was always incensed when the overhead air planes rattled our cups and plates.

And yet here I was sitting on our fire escape and directly above our buildings were three air crafts circular with a ring of lights. The ships traveled slowly like blimps. I had seen plenty of blimps at the beach and  Yankee stadium. Ten long minutes passed and finally the ships were no longer visible. We sat on the fire escape not saying anything. My sister the more adventurous one decided that she no longer wanted to be on the fire escape and went inside. Derek and Eugene also quietly went into their apartment. I watched the dwindling crowd for another few seconds before I to slipped back inside.

A year later...

Another brutal summer was upon us our parents gave us some Italian ices and told us to eat them on the fire escape so we wouldn't make a mess inside. Out of the blue Derek turned to my sister and I asked: "do you remember the funny spaceships we saw last summer" For a moment my sister and I froze as if a movie had been paused, and within a finger snap. We both said yes. We sat there  our ices melting as realized that it had taken a full year for us to remember our close encounter of the whatever kind.

I don't know what we saw,

I only know 3 things
1) the three crafts were large all three covered the avenue East to West.
2) they moved silently
3) the shape was not tube-like an airplane.

Yes I know I said 3 but the fourth is the most important:
4) I have never seen an air craft like that not in movies, air shows, TV, museums, documentaries the Internet etc.

What do you think?