You heard it here first

I saw a UFO when I was in school.

At least that's what I think it was. I was 12-14 years old and in the middle of a lesson in my classroom in Muscat, Oman. Our windows that year had a view of the highway piercing through the rocky al Hajar mountains in the distance. The bright blue waters of the Persian Gulf lay unseen on the other side. That day the sky was the way the local newspapers predicted it to be the whole year round - clear to partly cloudy.

I don't remember what subject we had that period. I remember the teacher going on with the lesson and my classmates silently making (or passing) notes. I was seated at my desk in the front of the class, my upper body leaning over the wooden top, my face cradled in the palm of one hand as I looked on at the teacher with an expression of teenage boredom.

My eyes left the teacher and wandered over to the nearest window. Far in the distance, an object that looked exactly like a flying saucer was hovering above the mountains in the baby blue Omani sky. The UFO didn't move, it just stayed in that one spot for the whole 5 seconds I kept looking at it. I was still leaning over my desk, and my face was still cradled in the palm of my hand.

I shifted my gaze across the classroom and then moved it back over to the window. The UFO was gone. The mountains, the highway, the tiny cars zipping along the highway looked deceptively innocent.