how I traumatized my toddler

If you at all have doubts, listen to your instincts. I didn't and this is what happened: I traumatized my son. At least I'm worried I may have.

Yesterday we ventured to the ZOO, as we do at least twice a month. This time, to a new exhibit - dinosaurs! (Hear me roar to illustrate: dinosROARS! - They should've named the exhibit that). But these were not just any old plaster dinosaurs; these ones were robotic, life-size, and chatty - in their primal dinosaur ways. Indeed, they were reminiscent of the dinosaurs we recently saw at the science museum, BUT these ones were let loose outside in the mini jungle, sandwiched between the polar bear prison and the poorly camouflaged ZOO keepers pooper-scooping on the elk lawn. These dinosaurs surprised us --to put it mildly--, some displaying their toothy, warty might readily without abashment, others lurking behind shrubbery and bamboo, huffing and grumbling, surely preparing to pounce on our poor little homo sapiens frames, resolved to tear us to shreds. Because we were there for the sneak preview on a drizzly day, we were practically there alone, feeling lost in prehistory and faraway from everything we have come to know and love. At least, that's how Jonah seemed to feel.

I must admit, though, that the grand finale --the T-Rex-- was almost too much for the thirty-something-year-old me to bare, its super bassy roar rattling the air. Jonah clung to me like a teeny koala bear. I was sure he would pee his pants in fear, but my brave little jungle soldier hung in there, albeit extraordinarily pale (paler than his usual pale self) and rendered nearly speechless.

You see for yourselves (though those of you familiar with Mad TV Stewart may notice the roar of the dinosaur captured on camera here sounds suspiciously similar to the throaty sound Stewart makes when he's angry):





P.S. I borrowed Jonah's logic here. When he is afraid of something, he tends to disarm it by talking about making it his friend.