Paper Mache Dinosaurs

When I was a child I used to build paper-mache dinosaurs. Quite simple process really: take a few small balloons, blow them up with air, and then wrap these balloons up with wet, sticky strips of newspaper. Then, finally try to form this blob into the semblance of a Brontosaurus or a Tyrannosaurus or whatever horrible prehistoric vision your imagination can muster. When your creation dries, the sticky glue forces the structure to hold its form. If you feel particularly crafty, you may paint your dinosaur any which way you deem fit.

On my bookshelf sits a dinosaur I made when I was 9. It is a Brontosaurus and it was painted bright red by an unsteady hand and an unsure eye. My 9-year old breath, so pure and so full of childish hopes and idealistic dreams, I surmise, still sits trapped inside this Brontosaurus which sits preserved like a time capsule, or a Trojan horse, housing someone’s beloved toy soldiers and tin Indians and assorted worthless knick-knacks such as paper clips and bottle caps, buried in a back yard somewhere only to be forgotten. I remember seeing this on PBS: in certain savage nations, warriors will eat the brains and sinewy tendons of conquered foes. The theory is, I suppose, they will absorb their opponent’s strength. Hmmm, with mind racing I wonder devious thoughts. Perhaps if I drilled a small hole in my paper mache Dinosaur and hurriedly sucked out MY encapsulated 9-year old breath in one huge inhalation, would I re-absorb the bright-eyed vigor of my youth, even for an instant? Would the cynicism and jaded hopelessness that come with age be wiped away, even briefly, like a sponge or a wad of “triple absorbent” paper towel wiping away a stain, as you usually see on TV? The twisted, obtuse rationale here would probably be the equivalent to eating a child from a conquered village in the hopes it could somehow slow the impeding, plodding, agonizing approach of age?

Now imagine if you will, somewhere far off in the multi-dimensional expanse a 9-year old boy, brushing his teeth dressed in Superman pajamas, looking in the mirror grudgingly preparing for bed. All of a sudden, the earth rumbles and the lights flicker off, and this child is privy to an apocalyptic vision yanked right out of his own nightmares. What he sees - what this sweet, innocent, unprepared child witnesses this fateful moment on this fateful night: an ugly, desperate, scary man with HIS dinosaur he made for HIS daddy clutched between long fingers. The ugly man this child sees scarily distorted in the bathroom mirror is bent over like a gnarly stick, or a hunchback with dark penetrating eyes gazing deep into his own, lips pressed up against his beloved creation, as though he is thirsty beyond reason lost in the desert, drinking from a canteen. A grotesque image. This man’s chest rising and falling like a pathetic fish sitting in the dry sand, surrounded by life giving oxygen, but dying from suffocation.