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"Put those damn things away!" yelled Timmy's stepfather,
bursting into the boy's bedroom like a wild animal. He was large
and hairy and not very patient. His name was Ned Groat.
Timmy froze.
He was playing with his dinosaurs, staging battles on his
bedspread. He'd got them by sending a five dollar bill (saved from
unspent lunch money) to a P.O. Box in Muncie, Indiana, answering an
ad that promised SEVEN INFLATABLE DINOSAURS -- ONLY $4.95!
Other ads promised sea monkeys, fake turds, hot pepper gum, even
X-ray glasses that let you see a girl's underwear, though Evan Rooney
in third period swore he'd tried it and they didn't work. But Timmy
wanted only the dinosaurs.
ALLOW EIGHT WEEKS FOR DELIVERY, it said, so Timmy had to
swallow his impatience for two grinding months, asking every day if
the dinosaurs had come yet and -- every day -- being disappointed.
When the small, brown-paper package finally showed up, under a
stack of utility and credit card bills, Timmy was thrilled, but Ned
just said it was all a big ripoff.
The box didn't look like much. It was no bigger than one of
those lunchbox cereal packages, where you split open the front and
poured milk right into the package (only it always seemed to leak
and make a big mess, especially when Ned was watching). It was
hard to believe, and harder for his stepfather to believe, that
anything valuable could come in such a small container.
"But they're inflatable," Timmy tried to explain. "You have to
blow them up--"
Ned was not impressed. He'd ripped open the package, using
his teeth, and pulled out the first of Timmy's 'dinosaurs' -- a tiny,
wilted piece of latex rubber. "I'll blow it up," he said, taking a deep
breath and exhaling into the balloon. Slowly it filled out, sprouting
haunches and forelegs and a long, cruel snout with jagged-looking
rubber teeth.
"What a ripoff," he said. "It's so fake-looking."
Timmy didn't think so. The T. Rex in his stepfather's hand (for
that's what it was, no other creature could look so savage) seemed to
have an eerie reality to it, far beyond the inkstamped scales on its
rubber hide. It was almost as if the ghost of some Jurassic horror
had travelled across the years -- millions of them -- to haunt this
little balloon with its hungry, primitive soul.
"For two cents, I'd throw this right in the trash," said his
stepfather, releasing the air, letting the balloon shrivel and die.
"You're too old to be playing with balloons, Timmy, the other kids
will think you're a wimp." Ned was reaching for the trash bag when
Timmy's mom stopped him.
"Please, Ned," she said, in a tone of voice she'd never needed
with Timmy's real father. "Let him have the balloons, he's been
waiting for weeks, what's the harm?"
Reluctantly, Ned agreed.
My dad wouldn't have tried to throw them out, Timmy
thought, studying the blown-up figures lined up, like soldiers, on his
bedspread. There was a triceratops, a brontosaurus, a stegosaurus, a
pteradactyl, an ankylosaurus (Timmy had never heard of that one),
and an allosaurus.
And, of course, T. Rex.
Continued on the next page
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