DEAD PTERODACTYL

One afternoon, when I was very little, I asked my older sister what the black plastic tarp beneath the rocks in our backyard was. She told me that it was the remains of a pterodactyl. It was a fantastic answer, because the tarp did look like what I imagined the winds of a pterodactyl would look like, and I was really into dinosaurs at the time. (Who wasn’t?)

I took her word for it, like I took her word on most things, and it wasn’t until we replaced the grass on our front lawn with rock and I saw the laborers laying down a plastic tarp over the ground that I realized how full of shit she was. I immediately went into the backyard and kicked the rocks around until I found the plastic. It was true. This was no dead dinosaur. You could buy this crap at Home Depot.

Then, I thought, maybe I should give my sister the benefit of the doubt. I mean, this, right here, is obviously not a dead pterodactyl… but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dead pterodactyls buried in the backyard somewhere.

I never followed up on that assumption – you’re welcome Mom and Dad – but I do think about this little leap of faith sometimes when I have prolonged conversations with my little sister. It’s funny how you easily you forget how gullible children are when you don’t have them in your life very often. They really will believe anything you tell them.

I once believed in Santa Claus, though I can’t remember why I thought the idea of a fat merry dude flying around the world delivering the latest commercial products was feasible. Obviously. The same goes for the Easter Bunny. I mean, think about this for a second: these are some of the most fantastical characters ever devised, with miraculous powers and unexplained motives.

Were there other holiday figures that came before that were too much even for gullible children to believe in? Are these characters the craziest we can get without crossing the line?

I wonder about people who believe in God, in whatever form he may take for them.

When I was told that Santa Claus wasn’t real, did I ask for evidence? I doubt it. I probably ran to my parents and they asked who told me and then admitted the truth: they were big fat liars. But what was to keep me from doing the same thing there that I did for the dead pterodactyl? I could have just as easily said, “Mom and Dad say he’s not real, but just because there’s no evidence that he exists doesn’t mean that he doesn’t.” But I didn’t, because I knew deep down that the world makes more sense without this Santa Claus character, and therefore my parents were telling the truth.

The more we learn about the universe, the more that feeling of “something here isn’t right” will grow, and God will shrink. Sure, they’ll be reactionaries who fight back and indoctrinate their children, but they have and always will be in the minority. I’d put money down that in next couple hundred years, maybe even in this century, if we don’t blow each other up, God will take his rightful place next to Santa Claus.

When children ask their parents some of the more complicated questions “Where do stars come from?” or “What happens to people when they die?” and these parents will talk about a benevolent creator who manages every moving part of the universe because it’s the easiest answer to give. And when one of the more enlightened children at school tells our boy or girl that God doesn’t exist, he or she will come home crying and the parents will have no choice but to give up the ghost.