Dinosaur Logic

Dinosaur Logic

“I don’t know why,” she had been telling her younger brother this for the last half an hour: She didn’t know why dinosaurs were no longer alive.  He was only six and already wanted to be a paleontologist.  That’s really all he ever talked about when she walked to and from school.  She knew how dinosaurs died; the meteor hit the earth causing a big kaboom effect.  She had already told Andy, but he still persisted in asking her as if she was lying to him.

“Why don’t you ask Dad, Andy?”  She held her little brother’s soft, warm hand in her own as they crossed the street.  Her mother had given her the responsibility, since she was now a big girl who was in fifth grade, to walk her brother home safely from school.

‘Don’t leave your brother alone Tara.  I’m trusting you.’ Her mother had said that in the beginning of the year and now it was October.  Her brother never quieted.

“I asked Dad who told me to ask Mom because he was busy working.  So then I asked Mom, but she was busy making dinner and said to ask you. So?” 

They both stopped as the street light blinked red in the shape of a human hand.  The cold wind blew around them, making her hair tickle her pink cheeks.  Poulsbo, Washington would be cold for another two months, but that wouldn’t stop Andy and her from making her parents go trick-or-treating in two days.  Her brother squeezed her hand, breaking through her happy thoughts and looked up at her expectantly.  He had green eyes, the same as her own, along with similar light brown hair, that both her parents had as well.  The only difference between them was that he had freckles fanning his nose, which only he and their mother had.

“Okay.  I’ll tell you, but it’s a secret, so you can’t tell anybody, especially Mom and Dad.”  This got her brother excited.  His eyes got bigger and he nodded so fast she thought his freckles wouldn’t have ended up on the same position on his face. 

“Okay, okay.  I promise I won’t tell anybody.”  She looked left to right to add emphasis to her words, as her brother jumped up and down with excitement.

“Dinosaurs never died.  The dinosaurs went into hiding because they are all too shy to say hi to everyone all the time.  They live in protected National Parks that’s why the government makes the parks.  It’s to protect the dinosaur’s original habitat.”  Andy’s eyes got even bigger and his little red mouth, that earlier had contained a red cherry Jolly Rancher, dropped open.  His teeth and tongue were coated in the red candied stickiness.  Her mother would scorn him later on for ruining dinner with a piece of candy.

“Really?  They never went away?  Why are they so shy?  T-Rex can’t be shy; he’s the king of all the dinosaurs.”  They crossed the street when the green walking man blinked into view.  A car honked when her brother stopped in the middle of the street, waiting for her response.  She tugged him hard with her arm, making him stumble and his red T-Rex backpack thrash upon his small back.  She heaved a sigh when they made it across the street, only four more to go and they would be home free from all the traffic.

“Jeez, Andy you are so slow.  Anyway, the dinosaurs are shy because people just can’t accept that they are real, so the dinosaurs got used to being without us while in hiding.  T-Rex’s are the most shy because everyone thinks they are always bad.  I mean if a T-Rex suddenly appeared next to Chris’s Pizza place do you think people would ask Mr. T-Rex if he wanted a Pepperoni pizza or a Hawaiian pizza.  No all the people would scream and run away because they are afraid and poor Mr. T-Rex would have his feeling hurt.  So, you see dinosaurs are really just a well kept secret between adults.”  They stopped again and both looked at Chris’s Pizza building and imagined the T-Rex ordering a pizza like any ordinary person would do.

“Well, he would definitely want Pepperoni because they eat meat and Hawaiian pizza has vegetables and pineapples on it.  But I wouldn’t be afraid of him, I wouldn’t run away Tara.  I would be his best friend.”  She rolled her eyes as her brother puffed out his tiny chest and dropped her hand and walked across the street all by himself.  At first she was scared when he dropped her hand, but she realized he was okay.  He got to the curb and turned and smiled, his dimples flashing her from a mile away. 

“What else, Tara?  What about the Terradactyl’s, how do they hide?”  Her brother asked once she joined him on the curb and she grabbed his hand once again as a crowd of people pushed past them.  She looked up into the sky, considering how a Terradactyl would actually hide.  She saw a plane and smiled as her imagination took flight once again.

“Terradactyl’s don’t actually hide, we just don’t notice them.  Remember how Bobby last week in your class during ‘Show & Tell’ said he saw a UFO outside his bedroom window and your teacher said he shouldn’t tell lies.  Well he didn’t see a UFO, he saw a Terradactyl.  It’s a common mistake most of us make, see up there it looks like a plane, but more than likely it’s a Terradactyl surfing through the wind.”  She pointed to the airplane flying through the sky, darting between clouds and the sun.

“Awesome!”  He craned his neck so far back, she thought it would only be one more inch, until his neck was permanently positioned that way and she would have to lead him home backwards and then explain to her mom as to why his head was that way.  It would more than likely be blamed on her, being the older sister and all.

But as Andy asked more detailed questions about the dinosaurs on the way home, she found she couldn’t stop the lie from slipping through her lips.  The lie she told seemed to flow out without a dam to dim it in any way.  Her imagination continued to run wild.  She felt powerful, as if she were creating her own world, that was at least real in her little brother’s mind for the time being.  All the way home, she continued to tell her brother about her imaginary dinosaur logic.

***

Of course during dinner, her brother repeated everything she had told him to keep secret to their parents, including Bobby who happened to be there next door neighbors, about how the UFO wasn’t an unidentified flying object, but a Terradactyl disguising itself on its nightly flight before having to go to sleep in some National Park mountain side.  Then Bobby had been so excited because he had been grounded for telling the lie of the UFO during class, when he was specifically told by his mom not to say anything about his UFO sighting, so he of course explained the whole thing to his mother and how he knew about ‘the adult secret.’  She had been furious at Andy for filling her son’s head with more lies and called our Mom, in which Andy then explained everything to Mom. 

So here she was now, grounded for all eternity, her mom had said till she was thirty and to Tara that was just like forever.  Tara wondered if anyone had built a time machine yet, so that she could borrow or perhaps buy with her allowance money, for just one quick trip back in time.  Maybe just to strangle her little brother, so he wouldn’t be able to talk anymore.  She sighed.

Silently, she sent waves of death toward her brother, who sat next to their Dad, promising him retaliation on some later date.  For now, Mom was doing the same thing to her, which meant no dessert on top of being grounded, which happened to be her favorite tonight: banana pudding and no cartoons for two weeks.  She pushed the broccoli around her plate with the fork, making an annoying piercing scrape like nails on a chalkboard, she guessed she could watch the Channel 4 News with her dad at five, but it was always so boring listening to some guy talk about the weather that never changed anyway.   She decided she would try not to look at her parents after her brother left the dinner table in search of the pretend dinosaurs that roamed the earth in hiding.  The silence didn’t seem to last as long as Tara had hoped it would.

“Why would you tell your brother dinosaurs are real?”  Her mother looked over at her from across the small table; the look she gave was scarier than the words themselves, her eyes ablaze with that motherly disapproval that only children received and that Tara noticed every so often her Dad got it to, when he didn’t do what had been asked of him.  Her mother seemed to be the queen of ‘the look.’

“What was I supposed to do?  He wouldn’t shut up about dinosaurs and you guys wouldn’t tell him.  So I made up a story about dinosaurs.”  Her fork accidently slipped across her plate and a piece of broccoli flew across the table and landed right onto her Dad’s plate.  She glanced at him and his hand was on his forehead massaging slowly with his big stubbly fingers with his eyes gently closed, as if a migraine pressed against his skull.  She guessed he was irritated more so than sleepy, which meant she would be getting the fatherly ‘look’ soon enough.  When both parents gave you ‘the look,’ everyone knew you’re in for some definite trouble.  Maybe, she thought fearfully, they would ground her forever?  What about Mindy’s birthday party next week, did being grounded mean: no birthday parties either? 

“Your brother is still very young and will believe anything you tell him because you’re older.  So next time, Tara, keep the stories to yourself.”  Her Dad’s voice was deep, giving off a slight rumble, yet he wasn’t mad.  Tara couldn’t believe it, no ‘look’ from her Dad, maybe there was still some hope left in the world.  His eyes were crinkled at the edges and he seemed to be laughing from the inside.  Her mother elbowed him and he coughed putting his hand over his mouth, choking on Tara’s piece of broccoli that he had stabbed and placed into his mouth before Mom could notice.  Her Dad smiled at her, after he was done coughing the broccoli chunks back up from the ‘wrong tube’ as he had once explained to her before when she had coughed rather hard on a piece of food.

“Tony, don’t encourage the girl to lie.  It’s not funny.” Her mother did not look happy at Dad’s obvious amusement and I saw ‘the look’ thrown at his head.  Tara thought her Dad’s head might explode from that look, but it remained stubbornly on her father’s head.   Her Dad’s shoulders began to shake slightly and then he laughed.  It was as if a wave of laughter swept through the room.  His laugh was loud and shook the table like a small earthquake and Tara couldn’t help, but laugh too.  It was rare to hear her Dad laugh this hard and this loud, as if he was releasing something he had been holding in.

“Oh Andrea, you got to admit her story was quite creative for her age, even if it was a fib.”  He held Mom’s hand, as she scowled down at him and looked away and then to Tara’s relief, she smiled.  She turned back toward him and pressed her hand against his head and pushed.  Her Dad’s head jerked to the left slightly, but it didn’t fall off his shoulders, as Tara thought her Mom wanted it to do.

“Stupid man.”  Her Mom picked up his plate, still with half his steak left on it and left the room into the kitchen, still with that little smile still on her face.  Her Dad looked toward the kitchen door longingly, steak being his favorite meat, was now gone, and he would have to wait for next week or perhaps when Mom forgave him.  Tara smiled, so adults could be grounded to?

“Hey, did you guys feel the earthquake?”  Her brother rushed into the dining room in his dinosaur pajamas and rhinoceros slippers.  He was holding a brown T-Rex in his left hand and a green Triceratops, with what looked like a leg missing (probably the unidentified figure in the T-Rex’s mouth) in his right.  Andy looked from their Dad to her and asked again. 

“Well, did you guys feel it?”  her Dad looked to her, then to Andy and laughed that same laugh again and it tickled her stomach, as the room shook.  This time though, he bent over the table and held his stomach, as if it were going to explode.  She was worried that maybe he had eaten something that had started to grow in his stomach and now it was trying to push its way out, she tried to think of all the illnesses that had a symptom of laughing.  Thinking of none, she decided it wasn’t serious and her Dad would pull through.  She smiled, as she then realized what her brother thought was the earthquake. 

“It was just Dad laughing, Andy.”  Her brother frowned, not liking this story she told, and went back to his room, with every step his rhinoceros slippers gave out a loud screeching dinosaur roar.

“Tony, if you don’t stop laughing you are going to shake the entire house down.”  Her mother yelled this from the kitchen, over the noisy sink water and the clanking of dishes.  She heard her mother’s soft laugh as her father gave another roar of laughter, tears pushing their way out of his eyes to the awaiting wrinkles that her baby sitter Marsha, Mindy’s older sister, had called ‘crow’s feet’.

As her father and mother were both distracted through laughter and chores, she took the chance to take her father’s portion of the banana pudding.  As she stuck the spoon in, she saw her father glance up, his eyes glazed with laughing tears and gave her ‘the look.’  She dropped the spoon back into the banana pudding guiltily and pushed it away.  He took the bowl and dipped the spoon into the banana pudding and just as he was about to place the spoon in his mouth, her mother dashed in from the kitchen and stole the spoon away and the banana pudding bowl from her father’s hands.

“I forgot!  The doctor said no more desserts for you.  It’s bad for your cholesterol Tony.”  Her mother gave him a wicked grin and shoved the spoon into her mouth and sighed with heavenly satisfaction.  “Mmm.  This is great stuff.  Kudos’s for me.”  She flounced back into the kitchen and left Tara and her Dad staring, as the door slowly closed shut.

            “Hey, Dad?”  Tara whispered.

            “Yeah?”  her Dad leaned forward across the table to hear her better.

           

            “Don’t you still have that Snicker’s bar upstairs?”  She had found his candy stash about a week after his doctor’s appointment, when Mom had stopped giving him his desserts.  She hadn’t told Mom and now she was glad she hadn’t.

            “Oh, you sneaky little devil.  How did you find it?  I was sure I hid it perfectly, so no one could find it.  Well, you are a lot like me kiddo, so I guess its okay.  So let’s go watch some news and massacre that candy bar before your Mom finishes the dishes.”  Her Dad smiled across the table at her and she smiled back and she realized they were now allies in this little secret.  She wondered if the dinosaur story she told tomorrow to her brother would involve how dinosaurs had actually been the ones to discover chocolate and maybe she would tell her brother how chocolate was really made.  Then perhaps she would get all his chocolate after they went Trick-or-Treating.  Well, she had some time to think about it.