my first dream

When I was small and young and foolish and maybe still blonde and curly, I had a dream.

It was a simple dream; an honourable dream; a dream that a lot of other people have had.

To me it wasn’t unrealistic, but perhaps I wasn’t realistic. I was only four or five or six or one of those ages when everything is as amazing and makes as much sense as a four foot orange jelly bust of Batman.

The point is I was an optimist. There was no bringing me down and my dreams knew it so they did what they wanted at any and all times; romping around my back garden like a plague of sugar-high unicorns.

Or as it happened: Dinosaurs.

Under the couch, in the garden. Wherever they were. I was going to hunt them. I’d net me a Triceratops by the time I was twelve and I’d train him and he’d be my friend and by the time we were old enough for a hunting license we’d be out there in the thick of it protecting mankind.

It was a natural career choice I felt, and for a time no one objected.

I can’t remember when it happened. Who told me (or if I was told at all?). This could well have been a result of seeing Jurassic Park and the fact that all the dinosaurs in that were made from something that was the equivalent of green jelly.

But dinosaurs didn’t exist anymore when I was five (or four or six). And they still don’t now.

Which presents maybe some problems with the dream of hunting dinosaurs professionally: No one is going to pay you for it and, even if they did, it would be really hard.