T. Rex Lusting

My sister Elizabeth has a plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex figurine in her apartment, a relic of some of our favorite childhood toys, probably discovered in some consignment shop somewhere. Or perhaps the reward for successfully slurping down an entire fishbowl of cheap vodka and purple juice, though, I know my sister and her tastes much better than to surmise that. Fishbowl punches with accompanying swimming plastic animals seem to be a staple in college towns across the nation, including my own former home of Ithaca, but I imagine it is a more recent trend. Initially, it seems incongruent, booze and old plastic toys, but a drink of that volume deserves a large and garish garnish, and, if fluorescent Little Huggie juice is the base for the cocktail, something juvenile and cheap is the best partner. I digress. The exact origins of the T. Rex are unknown, to me, but he makes for an amazing juxtaposition of texture and aesthetic to the silver, the crystal, and the hand-blown glass vases.

Lately, we have been playing with the king of the dinosaurs and my niece Winona, though, taunting and mild tormenting may be more appropriate. She likes to hang out with him for a bit, then gets nervous and scared, unsure of where the relationship is headed, intrinsically worried about his open mouth, his bared teeth, stagnant and plastic though they are. Her adrenaline response, conditioned from generations of particular genetics, does not fail her; in another, more fantastical time, this fellow would be a worthy and terrifying adversary. These pumps are a beautiful piece of nostalgia for that time of playing with Barbie dolls and dinosaur dolls in my bathtub, where, submerged underwater, all creatures could coexist peacefully. At first, I was trying to imagine an occasion where T. Rex shoes would be appropriate, then, I realized, the better question: when are T. Rex shoes not appropriate?

(image taken from The Daily What)