Dinosaurs..."When they lived!"
Each night, Jane or I lay down with Linus. It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes for him to go to sleep. We used to not lay down with him, but the last few months he seems to want us there. Personally, I don't mind it too much, because it gives us a chance to just lie there quietly and talk. Of course, there is always the chance that I might fall asleep with him, but that's OK too.
But lately, there's a problem. He always wants me to tell him a story. A made-up story. That's fine, for a month or so. But then the creative well runs a bit dry, even for a creative person like myself. What's more, he only wants to hear stories about dinosaurs now. It's not adequate to simply tell him about dinosaurs, how they learn about them, where they find the bones, etc. He'll always say, "No. Tell me a story about dinosaurs when they lived!"
What he means is, make up a story about a bunch of dinosaurs. Let me tell you, this gets old fast. Dinosaurs, for the most part, do three things: Eat, sleep, and procreate. After about a month, you've pretty well exhausted every scenario for what dinosaurs can do. I've told him stories about T-Rex's that have to fight to the death because one got into another's territory. I've told him stories about mating rituals gone bad, which resulted in a Triceratops having a broken horn and being shunned from further mating. I've told him stories about Brachiosauruses that live near the water, so they can avoid being eaten by carnivores, but also so they can have the water support most of their massive weight. I've told him stories about volcanoes, storms, meteors. I have either killed individual dinosaurs or the entire domain of dinosaurs many times over with my doomsday scenarios. Likewise, I've told him about dinosaur births, dinosaurs who search high and low for food.
I'm confident that I have captured the sum and total of all dinosaur experience in these evening story-telling sessions, and he has consumed it eagerly each night, up till that very moment when I hear the tell-tale signs of his labored breathing and know that my story has mercifully ended.
Some nights, when I am myself very drowsy, I have noticed that I will have a kind of waking dream that is woven into my dino narrative. It's quite odd; I'll hear myself speaking about an Ankylosaurus who is swinging it's tail in self-defense, and then hear myself talking about putting a cake in the oven, or driving my car to the store. Sometimes, Linus will say, "What? Why did the T. Rex call somebody on the phone?", and then I'll sort of snap to it and wonder at what point my dinosaur story went all Lewis Carroll on him. But it will be mere moments again before I drift into a verbal netherworld of dinosaurs mixed with the unpredictable events of my dozing subconscious. I fear he's getting a very odd impression of either dinosaurs or my own imagination.
Last night, after trying to tell him a story that I had told him before, which he called me on, I had to resort to the lamest of lame: A direct rip-off of the Jurassic Park plot. He finally drifted off, and as I left his room I swore that would be the end of the dinosaur stories for me. No more!
As Jane and I laid in bed last night, I asked her if he ever makes her tell him a dinosaur story. She moaned and said, "Yes, all the time." I asked her what she does, and she said: "I make up stories about a T. Rex named Rex, and a Triceratops named Sara, and they play together and go swimming and stuff."
In my stories, Rex kills Sara every time, usually with a savage bite to the throat.
12:44:19 PM 
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