What Makes a Boy a Dinosaur?
With the release of the first of the Jurassic Park films, dinosaurs suddenly gained worldwide popularity in 1993. The eight-year-old me was immediately caught with the vibe. I began to be interested in anything dinosaur-related. There was this new magazine called Dinosaurs, designed for a young audience. Each issue introduced new dinosaurs, with each page describing the size, dietary habits, behavior, and special bodily features (horns, remarkably long necks, special teeth to bite into certain animals…etc) I was mesmerized with this new world that had opened up to me. I was using my freshly acquired, magical skill of reading to its full potential to peruse those curious sentences informing me about a long lost universe of endless amazement. Over a couple of times the magazine mentioned the curious fact that human beings and dinosaurs never ever lived around the same time. The gigantic reptiles had been extinct so long ago before any chimp showed a sign of humanness. Furthermore, the planet occupied by dinosaurs was quite different than the present one in which we reside. It had different plants, oceans, mountains, atmosphere, animals and rocks. This idea had struck me with considerable force for the first time: An Earth that is not bothered with being without us, without me. I waited for each month’s issue in excitement and found other dinosaur-related material to voraciously read. I was so sad that my family did not take me to watch the film in the cinema when it was on. Perhaps I didn’t make enough fuss about it. Taking me to films was never a thing, anyway. They never took me to fun things like that. While dinosaurs were creepy monsters brought to life with the latest Hollywood technology for the audience, it became for me a way of thinking about life itself. They lived for so many millions of years that they physically changed over time, adapting to the changing physical conditions around them. Some scientists believed that it was not the immediate impact of the meteors but a much longer process of maladaptation that eventually made my beloved dinosaurs extinct. My mind was so occupied with the concept of what they called evolution that I was dreaming of all the dinosaur species that I knew. The monstrous T-Rex, Allosaurus, Brachiosaurus the super-long long neck, Velosiraptor, the tank-like Triceratops, Stegosaurus, the flying Pteranodon. Each was so unique yet so much the product of their time and environment. Yet even THEY disappeared or, as some scientists dare to claim, have been morphed into chickens or such. Whatever paved the way for their end, the dinosaurs for me were magical creatures whose bodies designed themselves into such perfect forms to cope with the world. I was disappointed that my human-child body was so dull and helpless compared to the ancient reptiles. Soon I found myself jumping from couch to couch with a robe stuck to the bottom of my pajamas, roaring and shouting out that I’m this and that dinosaur. I was hoping my body to gain new abilities by moving in unaccustomed ways. My early interest in paleontology soon became eclipsed by the external dynamics surrounding my childhood. Towards the end of the school year, my sour-faced, serious teacher complained much about me during the parents meeting, telling my parents: he is not interested in the lessons, he doesn’t listen to me, he does not focus in the classroom, he doesn’t do his homework properly, and all he’s interested in are DINOSAURS! She was certainly pissed at me. I had brought one of my dinosaur magazines to the classroom one day. Maybe that was what made her angry most. I distinctly remember feeling that both the teacher and the other kids in my class viewed that magazine as a stupid comic book. My mum didn’t tell me to stop reading dinosaur stuff. But after she told me about the meeting at my school and the way my teacher dissed me, I guess I unconsciously associated doing bad at school with pursuing my own interest for a long time. Perhaps that is why I avoided seeing Jurassic Park for more than quarter of a century and watched it right after I finished my PhD, being somewhat unimpressed by the film.
