Anyone who knows me, knows I love dinosaurs. I was that kid that learned all of the actual species names, learning how to draw as many as possible and spending hours at a time reading every possible fact about these immense creatures from our world before our world.

“When I grow up,” I thought to myself, “I want to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

Sadly, my daycare teachers had to inform me that, barring intense scientific advancement, that it was not meant to be. It took me a long time to recover from this news. I suppose I could have become a paleontologist, but a quick foray into biology turned me off. Add in the fact that I’ve never had a fun encounter with a shovel, and I’m much more content reading and learning about these animals and visiting museums dedicated to their study.

Or at least, I had been trying to all summer long. But something was holding me back. Some fear that were I to visit the Meet The Family Exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, I would only feel shame, guilt, even. A judgment that I had let these terrifying, awe-inspiring lizards of a feather down.

That I had not, in fact, harnessed my inner Rex. That I was letting other events, other promises determine who I was for me.

I waited all summer long, until the very last day of the Tyrannosaur. Finally, I had enough; I needed to see these bones, these fossils. I’m glad I did. From the T.REX documentary about the discovery of a juvenile Rex in Montana (no less narrated by Doctor Alan Grant himself, Sam Neill!) to the displays that detailed the entire evolution of the Tyrannosauridae family, I was able to reconnect with a part of myself that I thought was lost long ago.

I guess memory is a geology, a series of substrates compounding each upon the other. But if we dig, even just a little bit, we find out who we are, where we’ve been, and (maybe) where we can go.

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