It all seemed like a good idea at the time. A local mall was having a display of dinosaurs. Connor loves dinosaurs. Let's take Connor and Liam to see the dinosaurs. Weee! Not only that, let's hype it up for Connor all week long, not telling him what it is, only that he's going to get a surprise. What could possibly go wrong?

It started out well with the usual Saturday morning gridlock and insanity of 3 Road traffic and RAV Line construction. Actually, it wasn't that bad. There was minimal profanity and once you let go of the basic rules of driving and any semblance of manners driving in downtown Richmond is quite fun. It's like a giant video game.

Anyway, we get to Aberdeen Centre, find parking and enter the mall. There's a big sign in the entrance talking about their Jurassic display, blah blah blah, animatronic dinosaur ride. Cool. So in we walk, Bern with Liam and Connor with me. We pass the animatronic ride first and Connor is already holding me tighter. It's a freakin Velociraptor with a saddle on it. Remember what those things sounded like in Jurassic Park? Remember when they stopped being cute and started eating people? The line up for that one was for big kids 'cause the little guys were having none of it. There was one little girl in a pink dress that was yelling at her parents. I'm not sure what exactly she was saying as it was mostly incoherent and in Cantonese, but I'm sure it was something like, "you put my ass on that mo'fo' I will make you pay for the rest of your sorry lives!"

Needless to say, we didn't hang around that one. Anyway, the main event is a life size Tyrannosaurus Rex in the centre of the mall. Connor's still keeping a wary eye on the Velociraptor but I can see the midsection of it up ahead. Then he sees it. WTF!? This is somewhat different than the usual friendly dinosaurs in our bedtime books and on Treehouse. If you've never seen one of these things, let's just say it's a good thing they've been dead for 65 million years. It's over two stories high, it's head is the size of a volkswagon and most of that head is made up of teeth. I take Connor out of the crowd a ways so I can take some pictures of him with the dinosaur in the background, just like a hundred other fathers around me. I got the picture above and one other, and then it roared. Then all hell broke loose as a thousand little kids including both my sons figuratively and literally shit their pants. Not only did it roar, it was animatronic too. And there was steam from a pretend volcano. Very impressive. Unless you're four.

I couldn't put him down again until we'd reached the safety of the Diaso store at the other end of the mall. Then it was a non-stop talk on how scary the dinosaur was and how we weren't going out there again.

Like I said, it seemed like a good idea at the time.