Published: January 07, 2009 10:25 pm         

Making a tough choice: Dinosaurs or lip gloss?

Having four sons and four grandsons I am truly comfortable in a room full of lively boys with all their noisy play. The roaring, the growling, the stomping, and the gnashing of teeth that goes with play involving imaginary dinosaurs are just a few of the raucous sounds I've been hearing around our house for over thirty years now. And for the last few of those years a “soprano” dinosaur voice has been added to the mix - the voice of Miss Kira Michelle Peck, our only granddaughter.

It has been an awesome adventure getting to know our only girl. Kira has always been a keen observer of life and a gatherer of facts. She is smart (before her first birthday she would raise one finger when asked how old she was going to be!), articulate, charming, has a huge vocabulary, is very funny, and LOVES dinosaurs.

And this precious, and a bit precocious, five-year-old has no trouble explaining her fascination with dinosaurs. “Well, Grandma, it all started with learning about big armored reptiles, when I was two, which got me thinking about dinosaurs. Then, years later when I was four, I saw a movie called Walking with Dinosaurs and that was it!”

Kira begins and ends most conversations by passing along a bit of dinosaur lore that might be heretofore unknown to you. She does not expect you to know all the proper pronunciations of the various types of dinosaurs, so she is careful to enunciate each of their names carefully, along with a brief physical description, the period they lived in, and their most interesting characteristics. She will also remind you, at least once during each conversation, that although there are various theories on how dinosaurs became extinct, she herself favors the asteroid theory. All this from a little girl who lives for lipgloss from Claire's!

It was just after she shared her story of how she became interested in dinosaurs that I first thought of actually interviewing her on the subject. I explained what an interview was and showed her my prepared questions, explaining I would be including her answers in my next column. Our discussion took place over lunch and what follows, in her own words, is the result of that interview.



GRANDMA: Kira, let's talk a little bit about dinosaurs. Why don't we start with your favorite meat-eater.



KIRA: I love the Utahraptor because he has claws, and Grandma, the claw on his big toe can reach twelve inches in length!



GRANDMA: Awesome! What about your favorite plant-eater?



KIRA: Plant-eaters are just a little more boring, but my favorite is the Ankylosaurus because it had so much armor and a club on the end of its tail. I love the heavily-armored dinosaurs. Oh, and Grandma, you might not know this but there are some dinosaurs that are carnivores AND herbivores. One is the Gallimimus.



GRANDMA: I did not know that! Do you think you know all there is to know about dinosaurs?



KIRA: No, I need to get some more books and maybe a movie will come out with better special effects.



GRANDMA: Are there any dinosaurs that you don't like so much?



KIRA: Well, some of the flying ones are boring because all they do is catch fish and poop, but they aren't really dinosaurs but flying reptiles.



GRANDMA: Do you think it would work for dinosaurs to live among us?



KIRA: It would be okay, but just imagine, Grandma if an Ankylosaurus bonked your head off while a T-rex was biting your leg off - think about that for a minute!



GRANDMA: Yes, I can see where that might be a problem. Does the violence of dinosaur life bother you?



KIRA: It kind of bothers me, like when a Streptospondylus, who lived during the Jurassic Period, rips the flesh off a dead sea turtle, but that's just the way they lived - nothin' you can do about it. (I kid you not - this is how she talks!)



GRANDMA: What do you want to be when you grow up, Kira?



KIRA: A fossil worker, of course. (I'm quite sure she would have said paleontologist, if she thought I knew what that meant!)



GRANDMA: So, what do you love more - dinosaurs or lipgloss?



KIRA: I guess you could say it's a 100 % and a 100%. And Grandma, could I have the rest of your pasta?



During the interview, she and her dad got into a spirited discussion about which dinosaur was the smallest. Dad said it was the Comsognathus while Kira argued for the Microraptor. She's a charming character, my girl. And in my life, let me say this . . . characters are welcome!