I know. Dinosaurs are a thing of the past; they WAY BACK past, like, so far back our puny human brains can't grasp the time span. And since we're on the subject, I think I can say with confidence that because dinosaur existence is so distant as to leave only fossilized bones to tell their stories, dinosaurs are probably the most glamorized, romanticized, cartoon-ized, bad-assed-ized, and demonized reatily-based Earthlings to ever walk the planet.

Dinos were uber-successful as a species, BTW. Far more than we are likely to be. I mean, they were around for about 150 million years, and the whole time, they lived in environmental harmony with Mother Nature (until the mammoth asteroid arrived, anyway). To put it in comparison, we've been wandering about for maybe 150,000 years and we've pretty much brought the planet to its knees.

But I digress .....

It's the horror of dino teeth, most likely. Followed by the humongous body size. Giant gnashing teeth and monstrous bodies with claws are the things that have made dinosaurs the stuff of nightmares and stars of big-screen action films. I shudder to admit that Barney did a good job of making Tyrannosaurus Rex a cuddly friend, but let's just call that an anomaly.

I've read lots of non-fiction books about dinosaurs, mainly because from about the age of six and up into my thirties, my recurring stress dreams ALWAYS starred a T-Rex. Always. I had a T-Rex nibbling my paralyzed toes long before Stephen Spielberg thought of it. Just sayin'.

I studied dinos because I wanted to understand what it was about them that made my little-girl-brain spew stress in the form of a munching, twenty-ton beast hell-bent on eating me. I never thought I'd get to the bottom of things until I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam.

The light bulb went ON!!!

Maybe you didn't watch the documentary. A pity if you didn't. But for me, the amazing realization was that Vietnam was my dinosaur. That the war turned out to be the T-Rex of my nightmares is a story too long to get into here, so rather than digress, I'll make my point: my brain, like so many brains before and after mine, took something too real and horrid to comprehend and turned it into something fictional, fantastical and extinct, aka, something a six-year-old could control.

What is your strongest childhood dream, and how long did it follow you into adulthood?

p.s. have you ever watched a documentary on komodo dragons? For sure those things descended from the pure dino gene pool. Chickens, too, now that I think on it ...