Lunch Post: What really killed the dinosaurs? [updated]

In my experience, there are roughly three varieties of little boys: Car Boys, Sports Boys, and Dinosaur Boys.

There’s a lot of overlap, of course, and plenty of sub-species, like the Train Obsessives (Cars), and Fearless Climbers (Sports), and Superhero Fanatics (Dinosaurs). Not having a daughter, I don’t have as much insight into little girls, other than to note the epidemic of Pink Princess disease. When Ben was small, he was a Dinosaur Boy, able to name a bewildering number of creatures that hadn’t been unearthed yet when I was a kid. That fascination morphed into love for Japanese kaiju, like Godzilla, stop-motion classics by Ray Harryhausen, Greek myths and anything monstrous.

One of the most mysterious things about the transition from pre-literate to book-carrying child is the loss of early memories. It’s as if the kids’ hard drives are re-formatted at this point, and much of that meticulously-saved early data is just dumped. Ben can tell you the motivations and backstories of dozens of characters, but struggles to remember any but the most obvious dinosaurs. I bet he has a theory about their extinction though….

Ben wants me to point out that the cave lizard is wearing a leopard skin and carrying a spiked club.