“I’m Denise and I like dinosaurs.” I said in a tiny little voice.
It was the first week in kindergarten and an icebreaker, the teacher asked us introduce ourselves and by saying our name and our favourite animal. I, being the ever-so-anxious child that I was, thought long and hard as I dreaded my turn. A good majority of the class picked puppies, some said cats, a few chose birds.
Little Denise wanted to be unique, mentally crossing out all the animals that had already been mentioned. I sat towards the back, so you can probably imagine the sheer torture. Fortunately, nobody took my top pick. Dinosaurs.
Now fast forward a couple of decades and I find myself waking up to the Dinosaur Capital of the World.
A groan escaped my lips as a sliver of sunlight peeped through the curtain of our hotel room and danced on my face. I caught a glimpse of a dinosaur–a t-rex, I think. I rolled over and scrambled for my phone. It was almost 9 o’clock and I was barely rubbing the sleep off my eyes. We drove over 700 kilometres the day before, only stopping for pee breaks and a quick stretch. We rolled into town late and the dark made it difficult to see what the town actually looked like.
Finally mustering the will to get up, I headed to the window. I smirked. It seemed like a T-Rex had smashed right through the wall of the grocery store next to us. Drumheller, the Dinosaur Capital of the World would’ve made little girl Denise ecstatic.
