The Comet

When I was really little - like before 2nd grade - my dad got me this computer game/information game thing, I don't really even remember, but it was all about dinosaurs. I think it was just called "Dinosaurs." I can recall that there was one part where you could just click on different little icons, and it would take you to a new window/screen that just played a short animated movie about some part of dinosaur history. Dinosaurs in the air, large ones, predators, herbivores, whatever. I don't actually remember any of those in particular.

The only one that I do specifically remember is the one about dinosaurs going extinct. Most notably, the image of the comet crashing to the earth and how incredibly scared it made me. The image was of a bunch of brontosauruses chillin' like villains on a reddish plain, eating from some trees, with a stormy looking dusk sky in the background. It was mostly a reddish and orange image, possibly with some grays in the sky. Then something started lighting up behind the clouds as it moved closer to the earth and the dinosaurs turned their heads. The image of it behind the clouds really sticks out - it was well done, you could see an amorphous colored orb dilating in size and brightness as it went through different thickness and gaps in the clouds. Finally it touched down, and there was just a flash of white. Then everything changed, and it talked about the eventual extinction of all the dinosaurs, but when I remember most about this part is an emaciated t-rex stumbling to take its last few steps, and then falling over sideways and dying. Everything in the frame was grayish, gray dinosaur, gray sky, gray sands, and it was very eerie and scary to a 6-year-old me.

For a long time I was very very afraid of the earth getting hit by a comet and everyone dying out. I would look up at the sky - especially when it looked like it did in that video - and wonder if some light would start to shoot down the sky and be followed by a flash of white, and then I'd walk around and stumble to take my last few steps before falling over and dying in all gray. Sometimes I still worry about the first part. Sometimes I'm walking or driving or doing homework and I just imagine that orb of light crashing down in the sky wherever I can see the sky.

("Did anyone ever teach you to visual success?")

Peace out.