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<span style="font-size: 18px"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:rgb(153, 255, 255)">Call Rune Halonen Captain Oblivious.  </span><br/>
</span></i><br/><span style="font-size: 18px">The twenty-three year old man was raised by two very religious Evangelical Lutheran parents, and as Rune grew up recalled church Sunday, youth group and choir music. When he left home at eighteen, he began to broaden his worldview and at the same time test authority and the rules. He questioned many things about his parents religious beliefs, including his own belief in God. <br/>
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Over the years, Rune began having more and more doubts until he finally admitted to himself that he was no longer a believer. He came out of the closet both as a gay man and as a nonbeliever to his family and friends, facing an equally negative, and reactionary response from people he loved and cared about. In a nutshell, Rune was rejecting God's laws, and God would reject him because he was a sinner.<br/>
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Everyone knew that homosexuals were destined to burn in hell for their sexual practices. Rune sort of expected their response to be that inflammatory, and because of that he'd saved all his work money in case the inevitable happened. Predictably worried for his spiritual salvation, his parents threw him out of the house. The rejection from people he loved dearly might have been the end for him in the beginning, but he adjusted his attitude. <br/>
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It was their blind faith and inability to accept the fact their perfect oldest son wasn't so perfect. That Rune was the sinner that everyone should pray for, the embarrassing black sheep of the respectable Halonen family. As time passed, Rune seemed okay with their choice to part ways with him. Finding religious zealots the biggest hypocrites ever, Rune never stepped foot in another church after leaving home.<br/>
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Ever since the initial discussions had been raised with his Mom and Dad over his sexuality and the religious dogma he wanted no part of, they had largely kept their opinions to themselves. What kind of omnipotent, omnipresent God would sentence him and the man that eventually he'd fall in love with to a fiery, eternal hell anyway? <br/>
</span><br/><i><span style="font-size: 18px">Just say no to God. </span></i><br/><span style="font-size: 18px"><br/>
From Rune's perspective, something was either true or it wasn't. Rune always chose to face a truth and just deal with it. It just wasn't in his nature to avoid questioning/thinking about something out of fear of what he might discover or the truths he might have to admit. But Rune was in a quandary. He was still struggling to understand an extraordinary story he was recently told by one of his co-workers.  <br/>
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Over the summer, his co-worker's mother passed away. The man had recently learned that his mother's best friend and her husband that lived across the street from his mother, confided in his sister and brother-in-law that they witnessed an extraordinary event at the time of her death. According to them, they were sitting on their front porch when they witnessed a white mist with sparkles of light moving down the street towards their mother's house.<br/>
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His mother's best friend said, "I hope <i>that's </i>not here for Carmen." The mist stopped in front of his mother's house. Her husband something along the lines of, "I can't be here for this." and both decided to go back inside their own home. His co-worker said that they told his sister and brother-in-law that the mist lingered for a short time, circled their mother's house, left a trail behind it and then vanished in an instant. <br/>
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Shortly after, they called to let their mother's friend to let her know she had passed away, and they said they already knew. Rune thought the story sounded crazy. It would have been very easy for him to simply dismiss the whole story as fiction and not give it any further thought. Or he could have embraced the story as proof that his co-worker's mother was in a better place and use that as his proof. It wasn't Rune's nature, but now that he'd heard the story, he had to deal with it to reach some conclusion. It seemed to Rune, that there were a few possibilities.<br/>
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The first possibility was that the people in question made up the entire story. Rune honestly didn't think that was the case. Regardless of what actually happened, he knew his co-worker very well and didn't think he would ever lie about the story. Rune had never known him to tell similar stories and couldn't remember ever catching him in a lie. He asked himself if perhaps the story was made up because they thought it would bring his co-worker and his family comfort but Rune didn't think that was the case. His colleague's sister and brother-in-law were very pragmatic and, as he understood it, had concerns about the story being told to others. <br/>
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The second possibility, was that they saw something explainable but mistook it for something else. Rune felt that was certainly possible. Since his co-worker wasn't there to witness it, he couldn't comment on what it might have been. If they had said they saw a shadow that morning then his co-worker's mother died that evening or that they just had a <i>feeling</i> then he would have immediately dismissed it. However, from what his co-worker stated, they were both intelligent people who described a detailed event that took place over maybe a minute of time. Rune wondered if he would have seen the same thing if he had been there. He simply didn't know. <br/>
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The third possibility was that they saw something that couldn't currently be explained. <i>Was it possible/reasonable that they really did see something that couldn't be explained?</i> Rune honestly didn't know. <br/>
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Rune would not have any respect for someone claiming they knew EXACTLY what happened, and that it was God taking their mother to heaven. He honestly thought that was taking the easy way out and just using that for comfort's sake. Conversely, he thought it was a mistake to quickly say it didn't happen or to quickly explain it away that they were grieving for their loss, or it was the reflection of a car's headlight. It very well may have been explainable but he was not confident enough in the answer to tell an intelligent person they didn't see what they say they saw and that a person like himself, who wasn't there, could explain it. <br/>
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The truth was that Rune didn't know what happened and would likely never know. He didn't want to believe that the three possibilities he constructed in his mind were all equally likely. All he really knew was that his co-worker, for whom he'd always had a great deal of respect and admiration for, told him an incredible story that he couldn't just ignore. This honestly wasn't something that Rune hoped was true or was telling himself was true just because it gave his colleague comfort. Rune had lost numerous people in his life and had never felt the need to do so, it  just wasn't a part of his nature. <br/>
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To Rune, it either happened or it didn't, and his thoughts about it were irrelevant to the truth. Rune didn't take everything at face value, but he tended to be skeptical about matters that were a subject of religious dogma, and that included paranormal occurrences, ghostly activity and metaphysical topics. It would take overwhelming spiritual and parapsychological evidence to disprove any skepticism on his part. <br/>
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If he didn't see it with his own two eyes, it probably was the stuff of fiction, nonexistent. After checking the thermostat to see if it had clicked on due to the shifting change in temperature from the open front door, and verifying that it was turned off, Rune instantly debunked anything out of the ordinary. There were windows open to let in the breeze. Proving that it was nothing to be concerned about, Rune passed through the apparition that for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. Except in someone's imagination. No, his focus was completely centered on the Comcast technician who was installing his high-speed internet with 140 premium channel cable package.<br/>
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<b>"I think the Bruins best season was the 1971-72 season, their record was like 54 wins, 13 losses, and 11 ties. Then they lambasted the New York Rangers 4-2 in the series. That was pretty amazing, Malcolm. But what do I know? I'm a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. What about the stats for the ass reaming during they took during 1957-58 season when your boys lost to the Maple Leafs during the Stanley Cup finals?"</b> Rune sort of half cackled, half laughed at the red-faced technician struggling to place the cords in the right place.<br/>
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Apparently, Malcolm from Comcast noticed the Toronto Maple Leafs flag outside waving in the summer breeze, next to a rainbow flag and mistakenly assumed that Rune knew absolutely nothing about sports because he was a card carrying homo. Malcolm, like most New Englanders, ran a lengthy dialogue about their teams: The Patriots, Bruins and Red Sox. <br/>
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Only Malcolm spoke to Rune as though the new citizen of Newton was some simpering little faggot that knew more about shopping and manscaping than <i>manly man</i> sports. When the TV just turned on full volume, Rune was almost in celebratory mode. <i>That must mean the system was running right, yeah? he thought to himself. </i><br/>
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What he couldn't see was that Malcolm had become so flummoxed by his superior memory for numbers that he hadn't finished placing the cords where they should go, and there was no way in hell his television set should have turned on at all, especially to Lifetime network. He hadn't even set the receiver yet.  It unsettled the technician, who replied in response to Rune's statistical evidence with a clearing of his throat, and a<i> "yeah, uhuh."</i><br/>
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<b>"It's almost up, yes? I'm looking forward to watching a few games tonight."</b> Rune grinned, unaware of what had caused the set to turn on by itself in the first place.<br/>
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<i>"Hmm. Yeah. Almost." </i>Malcolm replied, his voice sort of trembly, where it had been cocky and confident before, as the cords for the input and output were placed in their jacks.  "<i>Y-You should be all set, Sir. Thank you for using Comcast,” </i>he said shortly, glancing warily over his shoulder towards the television as he scooted out the door. <br/>
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Rune thought that Malcolm's hasty departure out the front door of his home was due to his affinity for sports statistics, and his love for all things Maple Leafs and Blue Jays. <br/>
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<b>"Hm, weird. Maybe I intimidated him?"</b> he voiced aloud to no one in particular, flipping through the list of channels that<i> Malcolm the homophobic Comcast tech</i> left behind for him.<br/>
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Rune felt another cold draft coming from somewhere, or felt as though he walked through a cold spot.<b> "The hell?"</b> he uttered, setting down the remote control on the coffee table.<br/>
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He was prompted at that point to search for the windows he cracked open earlier, and close them up. The fresh air had done a marvelous job of clearing out the smell of fresh paint on the walls, but now he felt downright chilly.</span>