Dinner Date With A... by Lauren

Dinner Date With A... by Lauren - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

From the moment I saw them, I fell in love. Imagine a three year old girl sitting on the shag carpet of a two story condo, 1995. She watches a science fiction blockbuster of questionable historical accuracy and runs in circles in her tiny pink underwear, ripping off her tiny blue dress, roaring monstrously. That was me. And it wasn’t a phase either. (I mean, the ripping off dresses was.) Well into middle school, vast amounts of girl-hours went toward research in the name of what spawned from that single movie from the late Gen-X era. I’d seen it at least a dozen times by then. There was still plenty to learn after all.

The power of flight to diving deep beyond the ocean we know today, with so many classifications and variations between the fantastical beings— some may even be mistaken as alien, colors and textures ranging from one spectrum to the other. It was constant fuel for my young imagination. Inspiration that bled into every aspect of my life. In the many stories I wrote, I imagined myself meeting them for the first time with less disastrous ends than that of the movie I held so dear.

I can’t exactly explain how I wound up sitting in this diner, by the way. Memory is a little fuzzy on those details. I already filled in the gap with a magnificent tale of hailing a cab from the middle of Pangea, slipping the cabbie a Franklin just to get me here in time. The waitress brings me a glass of water and I watch the ice bounce upward gracefully. I must not have been here for very long if I’m only getting my water now. That’s good. That means I probably won’t be waiting very long for whoever I’m waiting for.

My seat rumbles beneath me. Text message? I lean to a side, reach to my pocket and slip my phone out. No notifications. The seat rumbles again. I look around to see that other people in the diner are looking around too. Rumble. Rumble. Finally I get an idea to look out the window, because maybe we’re having an earthquake and I don’t want to miss the chance to see a building collapse. Especially if it’s the last thing I see in my supposedly sudden short life.

A large meaty foot meets with the ground and the glass I’m looking through shatters instantly. My reflexes force me to cover my face and push away. I take shelter beneath the table, even with the ice water now dripping from the edges. Except there’s no way I just saw what I just saw, right? I look over as soon as I hear the glass subside. Those tiny limbs… (Is that a cane?) That thick neck leaning closer to the ground… (A neck tie?) Teeth come snarling into view Peering up slowly, I can finally see—

Shut the front door.

This is a Tyrannosaurus Rex wearing a top hat.

And he’s late!