Music: Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind by John Williams
 

The year was nineteen seventy-seven.  A young boy, Travis Smith, no more than 10 years old, goes to a movie and his life changes forever.  This is his story.

“So I went to the movies one night with my mom and dad.  We went to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I don’t think I really knew what the movie was going to be about. 

I remember watching the part where Richard Dreyfus starts piling up all those mashed potatoes and making that mountain.  While he was doing that I was thinking, ‘Wow, that seems so familiar.’”

As the movie continued, Travis watched, transfixed.  The form that continued to flash across the screen so known to him, and yet… 

“I just knew I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t place it.  Where had I seen it?  It was driving me crazy!  Finally, when that guy tore the top off his clay model – it hit me – my sheets!  Devil’s Tower was on my sheets at home!”

In fact, at the time Travis was watching the film, the mountain didn’t look familiar just to him, but to his mother.

“She bought me those sheets.  I don’t think she knew what that scene was either; not until we saw the movie anyway. Wait let me call her…nope, she didn’t know.”

They sat through the movie together, each wondering if they could be mistaken.  Finally, the movie over, they quickly made their way home to verify this unlikely coincidence.

“Yep, it was Devil’s Tower on my sheets, alright.  We were so surprised.  It was pretty funny.  I’ve wanted to see Devil’s Tower in person ever since that day, and here we are!

I guess I wouldn’t say that my life has really been drastically altered because this coincidence, but I’m not sure if we would have stopped here. I mean, who’s ever heard of this place outside of Close Encounters?” Nobody. 

No one knows what ever happened to those Devil’s Tower sheets, or to Richard Dreyfus.  What is known is that one day, many years ago, the course of a life (or at least of a trip) was changed forever due to a simple set of sheets.