back in time

I envy children.

They don't have any problems at all. Transport strikes are nothing to them. Crazy senators with delusions of saving the Republic don't bother them. Oil price hikes? Government corruption? Tuition fee increases? Papers? Reports? No allowance? Smelly, disgusting, repulsive, inconsiderate cigarette-smoking jerks polluting an air-conditioned FX?

I want my baba.

That is why I miss my childhood. Oh crap, look at the can of worms I just tipped over. I didn't have a care in the world back then. It was just me, my milk bottle, my toys, my fluffy pillow, and my books. My worst crises dealt with cuts, scrapes, bruises, splinters, and the odd milk tooth coming out to meet the tooth fairy.

School? Work? Family? Country? Future?

Georgie Porgie,
pudding and pie.
Kiss the girls
and make them cry.

Hahaha. Yes, I'm about nine days away from crossing the threshold into full adulthood; no more hiding behind the illusion of being "twenteen"!

I'm getting older every minute. Can of worms? More like Pandora's Box! I do try to hold on to every bit of my childhood which I could get my hands on.

Hehehe. We played patintero and piko in class this morning. Patintero I remember. Piko? No idea. Relation to topic? Absolutely minimal. Hahaha.

Bits of childhood. Right. Remember that picture of a dinosaur book I posted some days ago? I still want that book! I spent hours in the CSA Grade School Library all those years before reading that and all the other dinosaur books there. I must have borrowed every dinosaur book at least twice.

What is it with me and dinosaurs? Wow. Nice segueway. Ever since I saw Disney's Fantasia when I was in kindergarten I had become entranced with the ancient beasts. However, it was The Land Before Time which pushed me over to obsession with Littlefoot and all his saurian brethren!

My parents and grandparents "helped me along" by giving me books about dinosaurs. I also got toys which I used to recreate (you read that right!) the three periods of the Mesozoic era on our living room floor. I filled notebooks with categorized lists of dinosaur names complete with descriptions.

I could make them all march over my head.

Sauropods: Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Ophistocoelocaudia...

Ceratopsians: Triceratops, Monoclonius, Styracosaurus, Anchiceratops...

Hadrosaurs: Parasaurolophus, Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Anatotitan...

Carnosaurs: Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Charcarodontosaurus, Carnotaurus...

And I could go on and on and on...

Plus there were the cards (one big stack of them) and the posters (one thick pile of them) and the drawings (yes, I do have some artistic talent) and, and did I mention the books?

What was it with me and dinosaurs? I still don't know.

Come to think of it, that is one bit of my childhood which never really went away. I'm still quite obsessed with dinosaurs, so much so that the most recent issue of National Geographic (the one with pachycephalosaur Dracorex hogwartsia on the cover) had me squealing with glee. Oh, and I'm really looking forward to NGC's Bizarre Dino Week next week. Now that's a birthday treat!

Of course, the one thing which would really, REALLY make my birthday complete would be a trip to Star City's Dino Island. I saw it on Unang Hirit a few days ago, the largest dinosaur exhibit in Southeast Asia... I WANT TO GO THERE. I haven't really seen a complete dinosaur skeleton before, and they have one of Tsintaosaurus just waiting to be photographed with me. Hehehe.

Robotic and fossilized dinosaurs just an hour's drive away from home...

I WANT TO GO THERE.

And when I get there, and you happen to see me there, you'll see a little child standing awestruck in the shadow of the giants he so obsessively loved -and still loves.