TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 178

[Tobie Shapiro]

March 13, 2000000000000007


Dear Everyone Here,

	It's the birthday today.  Last minute, we 
finally got Feyna and Meyshe to invite a few 
friends for a birthday dinner.  I, wise to the 
last minute certainty, had already ordered two 
cakes.  Ha ha!  I feel so clever.  There will be 
a small gathering of about eight people for 
dinner, and we'll serve Matzo ball soup, apples 
and squash, a beet salad, challah from the Grand 
Bakery and cake.  Ooooh.  Maybe I ought to get 
some ice-cream.  I have decided to give Meyshe 
and Feyna a choice.  I will take them to Seattle 
when we can schedule it, and they get their 
choice: either a ride up there on the overnight 
train, complete with a compartment for sleeping, 
or we take the plane.  Then, they get the promise 
fulfilled.  Way back when they were little, we 
promised them that if they made it to their 20th 
birthday without smoking, they'd each get five 
hundred dollars.  So they both get a check.  That 
ought to deplete me some.

	Happy birthday.





 
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Dinosaurs

	I was nine years old and all the rage 
were plastic dinosaurs.  Dinosaurs are favourites 
with all little kids.  There is something about a 
house sized lizard with a brain the size of a 
walnut that appeals to the young mind.  My sister 
and I played dinosaur games in lieu of the usual 
little girl fetish for baby dolls or worse yet, 
Barbie.  We were almost too old for Barbie.  She 
came out in 1959, and we were growing our own 
figures by then.  We didn't need a pea brained 
role model: breasts like rocket tips, feet formed 
rigidly to fit into stiletto heels.  Dinosaurs 
actually existed once, and we would learn the 
names of the different kinds of dinosaurs, what 
their habits were, what they ate, how big they 
were.  Then that would all go out the window, 
because we made up stories about them.  They were 
usually on a voyage someplace, walking like they 
did in Fantasia.  Our stories were bloodless.  We 
did not favour the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Too 
vicious.  Too much tragedy.  Instead we stayed 
with the vegetarians: Stegosauruses, 
Brontosauruses, Triceratops, Diplodocuses.  There 
was an array of carnivores that we kept in store, 
because Tyrannosauruses and Pterodactyls always 
came with the set.  But we converted them to 
vegetarianism if we employed them in our games. 
Here comes the big ol' friendly Pterodactyl, 
flying in with a bale of ferns for all the baby 
dinosaurs.  And Tyrannosaurus Rex distributes the 
salad.  Wouldn't harm a fly.

	For my ninth birthday, my sister gave me 
a whole troop of plastic dinosaurs.  She wrapped 
them in toilet paper and lots of Scotch tape. 
There was Scotch tape looped tightly around their 
necks and Scotch tape around their legs, Scotch 
tape on their tails and around their snouts. 
This made it impossible to unwrap.  I needed 
scissors to cut all the tape.  Much worse than a 
brand new CD with that sadistic strip of tape 
along the opening edge, the one that never comes 
off in one piece.  For each dinosaur, I had to 
perform major surgery just to get the toilet 
paper off of them.  Dana thought this was 
hilarious.  It was like giving me a present with 
a stink bomb in it.  It made the whole gift 
giving experience an act of hostility.  It wasn't 
lost on me.  I complained to my mother, but Dana 
played innocent.  It was all in good fun.

	But once all the dinosaurs were cleaned 
and the tape peeled and sliced off of them, they 
were my favourite toys.  I started collecting 
them.  In those days, toy dinosaurs came in all 
sizes and qualities.  You could get a bag of el 
cheapo plastic dinosaurs, a variety pack of 
lizards about two inches long that had obviously 
been poured into molds because the extra plastic 
that dripped outside the mold was still stuck to 
them.  These had a funny rubbery smell to them, 
too.  They were to be avoided.  And there were 
cartoon like dinosaurs, puffy and stupid, with 
big eyes and smiles on their mugs.  Those were 
unfit to play with.  And there were larger 
dinosaurs, about ten inches in length that had 
some details on them.  The best were the ones 
with realistic shapes and poses, that stood up 
and didn't fall over when you set them down, also 
with some colouration, shading, white teeth and 
dark eyes, a little blush to the cheeks.  We had 
a big box of them, all kinds.

	Oddly enough, we never named them.  Maybe 
we felt you couldn't get too personal with an 
oversized lizard.  We had a pair of Triceratops 
with calm expressions on their faces, but they 
didn't stand up right.  So we turned on one of 
the electric burners on the stove and held their 
legs to the red hot coil, urging them to bend, 
flattening out the bottoms of their feet which 
had a big seam coming up the center.  This did 
not have the effect we'd hoped for.  Instead of 
flattening out the feet, bending the legs, the 
feet melted and plastic dripped down onto the 
burner, stinking up the kitchen and producing a 
plume of evil smoke that would have tripped an 
alarm if we'd had them.  Now our Triceratops were 
crippled war veterans who sludged alongside the 
other dinosaurs but couldn't keep up and were 
always falling over on their sides.

	We wanted our toys to be as authentic as 
possible.  I had a little green Pterodactyl who 
had the name of the manufacturer in raised 
letters on its belly.  This just had to get 
removed.  I took it upstairs into my parents' 
bathroom because I knew that there were razor 
blades in the medicine cabinet.  Very gingerly, I 
held the razor blade and started to shave off the 
brand name and patent information.  While I was 
working on it, a red liquid got all over the 
Pterodactyl and I was annoyed until I realized it 
was my own blood, and the razor blade was 
imbedded in the side of my middle finger.  I 
dropped the dinosaur and the razor blade, 
squeezed the wound and hid it from myself.  I 
didn't want to see it.  I stamped my feet and 
cried.  From downstairs in the kitchen, my mother 
screamed up the stairs.

	"What happened!?"  She sounded worried, 
and was coming up.  I ran out into the hallway 
and told her I'd cut my finger with a razor 
blade.  I was crying, holding my finger tightly.

	"Oh, thank goodness," she said, "I 
thought Daniel had fallen off the roof."

	This took the wind out of me altogether. 
My sliced finger was a relief?  Why did she love 
Daniel so much more than she loved me?  My mother 
washed my finger and wrapped a band-aid around 
the wound.  I threw away the Pterodactyl.



 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net