Actually, I wanted to be a mailman. Or, more precisely, a mail woman. But then Clarke informed me that he was male and I was female, so there was no such thing as a "male" woman, and that dream was shattered. I could be a female woman if I wanted, but that had nothing to do with getting the mail (which was, in and of itself, a beloved past time).
There were other things I loved, of course. And after a brief stint with "The Land Before Time," and a couple books on dinosaur bones, I figured out what I wanted to be: a paleontologist.
Well, really, I wanted to be a time traveler who lives with dinosaurs, but that was another matter entirely. I also stuck gloves on my feet and walked around roaring at people, insisting I was a tyrannosaurus rex. Don't ask me when feet with gloves on them made me a T-Rex. Somehow, in my five year old mind, it made perfect sense.
Anyway, one day, we went on vacation. Somebody (I think it was my aunt) thought it would be a great idea to get us kids cassette tapes entitled "We Sing Dinosaurs," and "We Sing Silly Songs," so we could serenade our parents with such ballads as:
Way down south where bananas grow
A flea stepped on an elephant's toe
The elephant cried with tears in his eyes
'Why don't you pick on someone your size?'
Boom boom ain't it great to be craaaazy?
Boom boom ain't it great to be crazy?
Boom boom ain't it great to be craaaazy?
Boom boom ain't it great to be...
Cra. Zy.
Yes, I remember that song in its entirety. It was really annoying.
And I loved it.
There were plenty of dinosaur songs on the "We Sing Dinosaurs" tape too. The one that will occasionally play in my head in those quiet moments when I'm trying desperately to find peace and solitude... and respite from horrible songs I listened to over and over until the tape was completely stretched out from being rewound so often... would be "The Dinosaur Footrace," sung to the tune of "William Tell." I don't remember much of it, but I do remember being horribly offended that the song would make ankylosaurus, one of my favorites, a total wimp who stops to rest while Triceratops was running as if he'd never stop. I mean, come on! Triceratops was a dinosaur fatty! Ankylosaurus was kinda bulky too, but he had an armored ball on the end of his tail! Surely that meant something! Oh, and when brontosaurus stretches out his neck to reach tyrannosaurus rex... I had a hard time swallowing that one. If I were tyrannosaurus rex, brontosauruses would be lunch, and if lunch were using his unfairly long neck to beat me in a race, I'd just eat him! Seriously! Who wrote that song?
After many long hours in the car, we arrived in Utah, land of lots and lots of dinosaurs. Most of our vacation was spent visiting relatives and other such non-fossil related adventures, but we didn't leave the state without making a pit stop in the BYU museum for fossils.
Now, I remember a large building with enormous fossils and a tour guide. We walked in and were greeted by a ferocious allosaurus!!! It was definitely an eye opening experience. I had pictured my beloved ankylosaurus to be roughly the size of a small dog, something that could curl its bony body up in my lap and take a snooze. Stegosauruses were big enough to ride, much like my daddy when he crawled on the floor and neighed.
No, no they weren't. The allosaurus, which was much smaller than a tyrannosaurus rex, couldn't even reach the top of my head with its little arms. No allosaurus head-scratches for me. I was pleased to see an ankylosaurus fossil, but a little disappointed to see that while I could ride it, I'd probably have trouble climbing on.
So, I found out that dinosaurs weren't exactly snuggle-sized. Nor were they my-size-doll sized. In fact, the fossils were so huge that the pterodactyl looked like it
was large enough to fill an entire empty warehouse all by itself!
But, I still loved fossils, and I still loveloveloveloved dinosaurs!!! In fact, as my mother tells it, as we walked through the tour, the tour guide would ask us questions. "Do you know what a diplodocus is?" And we would answer. "Yes! A diplodocus is a dinosaur a lot like the brontosaurus, and some people called the brontosaurus an apatasaurus because somebody thought they'd found a new dinosaur but really it just turned out to be the brontosaurus, and diplodocuses are a lot like them, except diplodocuses are longer and bronotsauruses are fatter."
And then the student tour guide would stare at us, shake her head and mutter, "My entire career path just became irrelevant."
As we wandered through the museum, giving a tour of everything we passed, we came across a window that looked into a lab. Inside that lab were *gasp!* REAL PALEONTOLOGISTS!!!! There they were, scratching and brushing at little dinosaur bones.
They looked really bored.
I think that might have been the thing that killed my aspirations to be a paleontologist, but it certainly didn't kill my love for dinosaurs. When I made it out to BYU myself, one of the things I did as a freshman was go back to the dinosaur museum. There was no tour guide anymore, and I swear the pterodactyl had been much bigger than that, but there was the allosaurus, in all its mini-tyrannosaurus glory. A brontosaurus leg, and a dimetrodon. I'd forgotten all the little facts I used to spout off to anyone who cared enough about dinosaurs to listen to a 7 year old "knowledge-vomit" on them (again, to quote my mother), but it still made me want to go home, watch Jurassic Park, and take a little trip back a few million years.
Forget being a paleontologist.
I still want to be a time traveler who goes and lives with the dinosaurs.
