Of Dinos and Dementia

One thing a lot of people don't tell you about being a parent is the amount of silly little games and voices you'll come up with to keep your small children entertained. Another thing they don't tell you is how these little games and voices can affect you as a person. I can not tell you how many times I meant to say "buddy" only to instead revert to "bubbies" (one of many pet names I have for my son). But without a doubt one of my favorite (and probably the weirdest) one that I have involves a little plastic Dimetrodon affectionately named "Dino".

When my son was about two years old, we would take him to the library to borrow bed time story books and to let him play with all the toys they had out for the kids. His two favorites were unsurprisingly a tote full of magnetic blocks and a big box of plastic dinosaurs. After about the third time of him crying when he had to leave without his beloved dinosaurs, I took him to Walmart and let him choose two off the shelf. One was a velociraptor (which he named Rex) and the other was the aforementioned dimetrodon.

Now both of these toys over time have developed personalities and voices (done by yours truly) and it's not uncommon for my son to have full fledged conversations with them. He loves playing boardgames and showing them things he finds funny, and will occasionally "prank" them. And since toy's don't cuss Dino's favorite word is "Noodles" (which never fails to get a laugh). I've lost count of all the times those two plastic dinosaurs have gotten us through long car trips or a bad case of the sniffles, and I've become so used to doing their voices now that I just answer as them even if we're out in public.

Now my previous job had two or three weeks out of the year where we had mandatory overtime. Nothing but 10 hour shifts back to back with maybe a single day off if you were lucky. My wife never liked to be at the house during that time because all I was doing was sleeping while home so she would take our son and stay at her mother's house until my OT was finished. One time my boy forgot to pack his beloved Dino and me being the sentimental weirdo that I am, I started carrying around this plastic dinosaur everywhere when I wasn't at work. Add in that I talk to myself far more than most people would find comfortable it was only a matter of time before I started talking to Dino, and eventually I was having conversations with a plastic dinosaur.

When my family finally came home, I had been doing this so much that I kinda forgot to stop and you can imagine the funny looks my wife gave me when she caught me doing it. I did dial it back but to this day I still chat with Dino if I think nobody is looking and the running joke between my wife and I is that if I ever ended up alone in some kind of TEOTWAWKI scenario with that damned Dimetrodon I'd go full Castaway. To be fair she's probably right, but there are worse forms of psychosis I suppose.