There comes a time in everyone’s life when they begin to fear for future generations. I’m starting to put on the years and that time has come for me. Where does my particular fear stem from? I can’t help worrying that dinosaurs no longer hold any weight among the imaginations of tomorrow’s children.
As a young buck growing up in the North Country, dinosaurs were untouchable in the way they amazed me. I slept with dinosaur bed sheets. I brushed my teeth with a matching dinosaur toothpaste and toothbrush set. I had the complete collection of the McDonald’s-issued dinosaur frost mugs.
When I wasn’t eating mounds of Play-Doh, I was reenacting classic match-ups of T-rex vs. Triceratops or Pterodactyl vs. Brontosaurus.
Was all of this traumatizing for a little kid? Yes, but that was just part of what makes dinosaurs so awesome. With the influx of new technology, dinosaurs are being passed over for some considerably less-awesome replacements. Do robots have sharp teeth like the velociraptor? No, and I bet you they don’t hunt in pairs either – but I wouldn’t know cause I didn’t do any research for this article.
Can Pikachu rip into the flesh of other living creatures? No, but a triceratops, with the aggression of 10 sexually frustrated gorillas, can chew on anything. Nobody messes with dinosaurs, except maybe Jeff Goldblum circa 1993.
What is perhaps more troubling than the general absence of dinosaurs are the reasons why they are absent. The powers that be saw the influence of dinosaurs on kids to be dangerous. For the same reasons that kids can’t ride in the front seat of a car, dinosaurs have been thrown under the bus, trapped in the closet with R. Kelly, another danger to the youth of America.
America has become a land of hypocrisy, preaching freedom to indulge in robots and fake animals of all sorts but barring the freedom to indulge in dinosaurs. The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet have recently been covering prehistoric beasts during the ice age. I could care less. Why give me O’Doul’s when I want Colt 45? Prehistoric beasts don’t hold a candle to dinosaurs. O’Doul’s is for mouth washing, not partying.
In the chain of greatness among all the animals ever, dinosaurs are at the top, right above wolves and barracudas. The suits fear dinosaurs’ influence because dinosaurs are free, hungry and irrational. These three characteristics are detrimental to any society.
Kids are naturally prone to being free, hungry and irrational but are often left with little to no choice in their lives, much like the captive T-rex in Jurassic Park. Their natural desire to eat crayons is quelled like the T-rex is barred from eating the colorful safari cars that pass by it. Are crayons bad for kids? Maybe, maybe not; science can’t give us the answer.
What America needs right now, is not fewer dinosaurs but more dinosaurs. With Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps and Michael Vick all fallen on the curb of the public eye, America could use some real role models, which is why we need the dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs are hungry, they encourage kids to eat. Kids need to eat but America is struggling with obesity now and most people don’t understand the fundamental fact that exercise does more than anything to help one maintain a slim figure. Dinosaurs were notorious for the amount they exercised. The brontosaurus had to have good cardio – how could he not what with all of the moving around he did? Okay, so being hungry is not a problem. Not running wild through densely green forests and dark red canyons of the Land Before Time is a problem.
Now, moving on to being irrational. Dinosaurs may not have been irrational, but they certainly gave off that air. Do you remember the show “Dinosaurs,” a sitcom about a family of middle-class, blue-collar dinosaurs? The baby dinosaur always hit the dad for no apparent reason. The dinosaurs’ body language often did not correspond to their emotions and what they were saying. Most irrationally of all, none of these dinosaurs wore pants.
Why wear shirts – which the dinosaurs did on TV – but no pants? It’s not a good look for humans or dinosaurs but the dinosaurs of “Dinosaurs” did it anyway. Perhaps these dinosaurs did not have the necessary motor skills to manufacture pants but the fact still remains that these working class dinosaurs did not wear pants and this is just plain irrational.
I leave you with an image demonstrating the majesty of dinosaurs. The sun rises. A stegosaurus is out roaming the area, looking for a meal. What to its surprise, it is blindsided by a triceratops. They jostle and clash until the sun reaches its high point and the triceratops roars a roar of victory with the sound of ten commercial megaphones, standing over the fallen stegosaurus.
How can we deprive our children of such magnificence?
Where have all the dinosaurs gone?
