Musings from a dinosaur
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 03:57PM Otto never wants to be left out. Last night at McDonalds that obsession turned tricky when he followed his brother into the Playplace. He freaked out and I had to Shawshank my way around the hamster tubes to get him. I was a sweaty claustrophobic mess and Otto was pert near apoplectic by the time we crawled through years of accumulated kid germs to get out. At any moment I could die, or I may have been inoculated for several major pediatric diseases.
It's amazing how kids survive. There's a whole world of danger out there and that's just with their parents. Everyday after dropping the kids off at daycare I burst out of the double doors so happy to have escaped the chaos. And then I think, "But I left my kids in there?" Whatever, I'll go back in eight hours when they're tired. Not so. Never tired. And they pick up everything so you're always having to learn something new; some new way to communicate, to distract or discuss the potential for i-c-e c-r-e-a-m. Why for the love do we feed them DHA and teach them our alphabet? Why do we want them to be so smart?
This morning from down the hall Sarah could hear Quin and I bickering in the living room. Quin insisted it was an Allosaurus. I said the large carnivorous dinosaur tearing away rotting flesh from a deceased Pentaceratops was a T-rex. Tangling with Quin is a dangerous prospect. He's hard-headed like the Wannanosaurus, or even his bigger cousin Gravitholus.
Sarah joined us to see what we were watching and to provide a third party opinion. I was right, but I only know the difference between the Lion of the Jurassic and the King of the Cretaceous because we've watched the BBC series Walking With Dinosaurs everyday for the past year.
Somehow our pet Allosaurus keeps getting out of the yard. You can see the confusion with the T-Rex.
It is a little violent, and I think it's done Quin a disservice to his sensitivity, or lack thereof. We were watching football with friends and a Denver Bronco ended up injured on the field. Our neighbor asked what had happened to the player and Quin casually replied, "He's dead." He shrugged and walked out of the room. No doubt an Allosaurus would come along to clean up the remains. (Can you think of a better end to the season?)
Typically we'd never show them the raw reptile violence, but it's free on Netflix. The upside is that our children are learning English from Kenneth Branaugh. They'll be a little dramatic but extraordinary articulate.
Teacher: "Quin, you raised your hand?"
Quin: "Indeed I beckon you. For it has been millions of years, nay, millions of centuries, and evolution's blood-strewn battlefield bore the fittest, bequeathing unto us the strongest, spawning yet more strength, begetting the descendants of our collective past, and bearing forth the progeny of the present, which is where I sit, and needing to pee."
What I hope to do is market a whole series of documentaries with Sarah narrating them. In Walking with Dinosaurs Branaugh will narrate a horrific scene: "And the Gallimimus comes to a bloody end. It's offspring left to fend for themselves, an unlikely prospect in the terrifying world of the Cretaceous."
With the unfortunate dinosaur headless and bleeding from a run-in with a Velociraptor, Sarah goes to work protecting her own young. "Oh, that dinosaur is tired and wants to lie down. I bet the bigger dinosaur will say he's sorry. I bet he's really nice and they're just playing."
Quin knows all seven installments of the series pretty well and roots for the underdog to swim/run/fly/crawl to safety. It happens a lot, but beware of the "Cruel Sea" episode where the big-eyed fish trying to birth gets bitten in half by the "largest carnivorous jaws the world has ever known." As cute as morbid can be, Quin says, "ooooh, no!" as the severed tail floats to the ocean floor.
Sarah: "Oh boy, that owie is going to need a band aid. Have you seen your daddy juggle?"
Daddy: "What?"
One more thing to learn.
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