Dictionaries and Dinosaurs

7 May, 2014

Houston

As little tykes growing up, certain things might appeal to one that might not appeal to others. Take, for instance, DINOSAURS!! (NO!!!! I am NOT OLD ENOUGH to remember them!!!!) I was on this dinosaur kick when I was about 7 or 8. I had a collection of little plastic toy dinosaurs which the local Sinclair gas station would give my mom every time she got gas.
I read every book I could find on the subject. I mean, I could tell you what each one was with first glance. Nearly every weekend for a couple of years, my mother would take me to the Smithsonian in D.C. to see the dinosaurs, and I really enjoyed those outings!

I remember my school principal, Mrs. C. coming into our third grade class one day and giving us a talk about them. She held up some pictures, artists' conceptions of course!, and one by one I called out their names - On, Dasher, on Dancer - sorry, wrong animals! I correctly identified the triceratops, brontosaurus, tyrannosaurus, etc. I got them all!
I even impressed Mrs. C, and as anybody who ever went to my school can tell you, that took some doing! 

Well, one day, about a year or two later, I was rooting through a closet at home, and I came upon my mother's old college books. There, at the bottom of this box, was a thick, dark-cover book, which, by the look of it, hadn't seen the light of day in many a year. I took it out of the box, dusted it off, and saw it's title: THESAURUS. 
“Wow!” I thought. “A book about THE Saurus! Must be about the biggest, meanest, nastiest tyrant lizard of them all! This has GOTTA be good stuff!!!”

I went out into the light of day and hurried to open it, and anticipation built! My heart pounded and I was expecting to see sharp claws and powerful jaws with razor-sharp teeth! However, when I opened it up and looked inside, I found NO pictures of dinosaurs. NONE!
And what's worse, it wasn't even about dinosaurs at all!! What a GYP! 

I mean, I was greatly disappointed!