Life Will Find A Way

Down here in the drab, gray, industrial part of the city; in the low slung buildings, train track choked area of town, I passed a torn apart car.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary on these streets and avenues, there are plenty of grime covered campers and station wagons made when Journey was top of the pops (complete with tarpaulin curtains for that extra homey touch) that stay permanently parked down here. This car looked as if it had taken a good hit to the backside, there was no bumper, no rear lights and no trunk lid. The trunk was still there, a gaping hole where there was once probably a spare tire, maybe an umbrella, bottled water if the auto owner was earthquake safety conscious; but no lid. Reaching from the carnage and up towards the dark and cloudy sky, with what felt like an anger at the violence played out here, were the spindly, metal arms that once kept said lid in place.

I walked past, looking in to the uncovered trunk, maybe they left a flashlight or a roll of fruit leather behind, and thought, “Wow, it looks like a T. Rex took a bite out of that car.”

That’s the dinosaur, not the band. Marc Bolan was a powerful man in his time, but I doubt he had the wherewithal to rip apart an older model Nissan with his teeth, even if he was all kinds of coked up.

Then that image began to run rampant as, from what I understand, T. Rex’s are wont to do. I imagined how difficult the commute into work would be had dinosaurs survived. I would definitely consider the bus option if I had to add velociraptors to the list of things to keep my eyes open for (topping the list of potential muggers and random puddles of bodily fluids).

I imagined pterodactyls swooping out of the cloud cover to snatch up slow and unarmed pedestrians, homeless folks. I imagined those spiky armadillo looking dinosaurs with the club tails chasing automobiles and smashing in store fronts with their… club tails. I imagined a triceratops asleep in a parking lot, I guess I just hate to think of a triceratops mauling business people and reeking havoc on our socio-economic foundations.

Then I started to think about how if dinosaurs survived, our work climate would be considerably different. We would probably be living in even more centralized cities, walled cities, perhaps with netting over the top to keep out the swooping of afore mentioned pterodactyls. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of customer call center gigs as people would have bigger problems to deal with then how some poor wage salve didn’t put up with their abuse and derision with the amount of grace one would like; problems like body parts being eaten by giant predatory lizards.

I imagined there would be a lot of people set to the task of defending our walled and caged cities, developing new technologies and weaponry. There would be legions of foodies coming up with recipes for allosaurus with blueberry compote. There would be plenty of people for the ethical treatment of dinosaurs. There would be a blockbuster movie about an amusement park gone awry when scientists clone prehistoric marmots that were selected out when the dinosaurs survived.