The Day I Went to the Dinosaur Museum

I went to the dinosaur museum a little while ago. Gazing at the full-body skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus suspended from the high ceiling, vague memories of my early childhood began to awaken.

Over twenty years ago, when I still wanted to become an entomologist and was devouring Fabre's Book of Insects. My mother, wanting to get me interested in creatures other than insects, bought me a book about the Tyrannosaurus. I fell deeply in love with that creature, whose scale was completely different from the insects I had been in love with until then. Just as my mother had hoped, my interest in insects vanished, and instead, I became a boy who loved the Tyrannosaurus. I memorized almost everything written in the books: the era they lived in, their related species, their body structure and lifestyle, and the names of their muscles and bones. It is one of my few boasts.

Now that I have discarded all that knowledge in the process of evolution, I enjoyed myself at the museum by mimicking the dinosaurs' faces and dubbing the lines they might say. Most of the fossils were replicas, but there were some real ones among them, and they certainly exuded a very rare and magnificent atmosphere.

I remember my father finding out that I liked dinosaurs and, with his eyes shining, inviting me to go dig for fossils. He must have been worried that I was a homebody and wanted to find some reason to take me outside.

For someone like me, who was the type to think, 'If I have to go outside, it's more fun to think about what the patterns on the tatami mats look like,' that invitation was unusually attractive. Perhaps I could dig up a Tyrannosaurus bone, and even if that didn't come true, I might at least find an ammonite. Dreaming of a future where I would possess a cool fossil, and completely smitten with the idea, I happily went off to a mountain where it seemed fossils could be dug up.

If my father had taken me to a proper fossil-digging experience instead of a random mountain, perhaps I would be famous today as 'Tyrano-kun,' much like Sakana-kun. Gya-gyao.

The comical sight of an elementary school student who knew a little bit about Tyrannosaurus and a suspicious-looking former barber wearing sunglasses, busily digging into the rock face of some unknown mountain with chisels and hammers, must have carried a criminality born of painful ignorance.

In the end, what we got was either a plant, a shell, a mineral that wasn't particularly rare, or just a plain old rock. Since I had brought nothing but expectations instead of excavation tools, I think I went home in a bad mood. Looking at the sediments that form strata in the Earth's history zone, I think about it. I only know my father's smile, but what kind of face did he have back then? Where did I put that rock? I probably threw it away, for sure. If it were now, I would laugh heartily and treasure it, but I don't think the me of that time could have understood such things.

While staring at fossil-digging snacks and nostalgic mini dinosaur statues in the souvenir corner, I started to feel uncomfortable. I had been bought this and that. Where did I put them all? Where did the boy who loved dinosaurs back then go? Because I am someone who cannot accurately observe even the present, let alone the future, I always think that I want to at least treat the past with sincerity without forgetting it. However, every time I find something lost, washed away by the slow waves of time, I am surprised that its shape and color have become something completely unknown, and sometimes I am so captivated that I stop in my tracks. Was this layer from that time? Is this one from that time? I no longer have Fabre's Book of Insects on hand.

Perhaps this is what archaeology is, I thought, while turning over such foolish ideas in my mind, and spent the rest of the day squeezing a deformed Brachiosaurus puppet. Gya-gyao.