Yesterday I had a few minutes before dinner and my youngest (who accompanied me on my whirlwind one day trip to the Great White North) wanted to play for a while. So we went across the street to the playground of the Great White Northern School for the Government Mandated Education of the Young and Impressionable. Whilst playing with my daughter on one of the pieces of playground equipment, a boy of about 7 came up to me and said, “Who are you?”
Having just read and watched The Princess Bride, I knew the correct answer to that one. “No one of consequence,” I replied.
Evidently, he wasn’t familiar with The Princess Bridebecause he looked even more puzzled. “But, aren’t you a grownup?”
He had me there. I confessed the truth to him. “Yes, I’m a grownup.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
Obviously, in his world, grownups don’t go to the playground. Grownups do grownup things, like watch TV, and go to work, and drink coffee, while the kids have all the fun. So I told him, “I’m here to play with my daughter.”
I guess he hadn’t thought of that before, and the answer satisfied him. He began to tell me that he attends the Great White Northern School for the Government Mandated Education of the Young and Impressionable. In fact, he had spent that whole day detained there.
“I attended this school too,” I told him. “But that was a long time ago. About 150 years ago.”
“A 150 years ago? Was there a school here then?” he asked.
“He’s just kidding,” my daughter informed the boy. “He’s only 42.”
“Well,” I told the boy, “it was last century. I started attending this school when we moved to town in 1974.”
“Wow!” He was impressed. I think he knew by then that I was playing around with him. “Were there dinosaurs then?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did one ever bite you?” he asked.
“No, I was too quick for them. They couldn’t catch me.”
The boy must have watched Jurassic Park, for he informed me, “No, dinosaurs are very fast. They can run about 100 miles per hour.”
“No, that is only in the movies. I’ve seen many dinosaurs in my time, and they are very slow. Very, very slow. In fact, they are mostly just bones, and even if you look at them for a long time, they hardly seem to move at all.”
“That’s because their dead,” he told me.
“You’re right. And dead things usually move more slowly than living things, so it was easy for me to get away from the dinosaurs. In fact, I’m a dinosaur now.” I began to walk towards him, waving my arms and making growling sounds.
“You’re not a dinosaur,” he laughed as he danced just out of my reach.
“Yes I am, and I can prove it. Dinosaurs are all dead, and dead things are slower than living things. So if I can catch you, I’m not dead and I can’t be a dinosaur. But if I can’t catch you, then it proves I’m a dinosaur.”
For the next few minutes, I chased him around the playground. Perhaps there was a flaw in my logic, but I proved to him that I am a dinosaur, because I never caught him.
