Walking in Your Footsteps

So this is what is on my turntable: Walking in Your Footsteps, Synchronicity, The Police, 1983, Vintage Vinyl

We are five minutes late. Breathlessly, we join a rush of parents and students scaling the steps up to our school. Parental sherpas carry an assortment of backpacks, boots, lunchboxes, musical instruments, snow pants and science fair dioramas, all without supplementary oxygen. At the top of the stairs we unsuccessfully try to squeeze in with a herd of 8th graders. They are mastodons mindlessly trampling anything that interferes with their gossiping progression. I fear that my four-year-old might be crushed and so we wait for them to cross. As we do my daughter informs me thusly.

“I can’t wait for Dinosaur Day! We’ll hunt for real dinosaur eggs. We’ll have a dig and it will be REAL and there will be dinosaur bones and we will have a SNACK. I can’t wait for Dinosaur Day!”

We spot an opening, merge into the bustle and hustle until we are able to burst into the preschool classroom. At first we are a flurry of permission slips and Scholastic book orders. When I catch my breath I congratulate the teacher. My daughter has never transmitted her enthusiasm for a school project. Dinosaur Day? Genius!

“No,” replies her teacher, mentally replaying the week. “She’s been talking about it all week but Dinosaur Day isn’t happening here.” I shake my head. My brain is not making sense of her words.

“Your daughter has been very clear. YOU are to dress as a paleontologist. You must find dinosaur eggs. You must have a “dig” and it must be REAL. Dinosaur day is happening at your house.”

Evidently the big one has invented a holiday.

Panic ensues. Emails burn through cyberspace. There is only one shopping day until Dinosaur Day. What if there is a last-minute run on little plastic dinosaurs? Our child’s first invented holiday and we haven’t even painted dinosaur eggs for Ankylosaurus to hide. Where can we find a chocolate Velociraptor on Dinosaur Day eve? Has Tomb Raider been checked out from the video store? (Lara Croft was a paleontologist, right? It’s basically the same story as It’s a Wonderful Life, right?) I fear that our license to parent is at risk of being revoked.

Back home but no more prepared, I flip through my record collection, seeking holiday cheer for Dinosaur Day. There is no rhyme or reason to my stack of vinyl (Melvil Dewey would plead for decimal or two). As I reach the back of the pile I greet the forgotten records like long lost friends. I flip past Elvis’s Christmas Album. I linger with Jelly Roll Morton’s Dead Man Blues. Again I celebrate MLK’s birthday with Will.i.am. Remember that time we elected our nation’s first black president and got free burgers at Bella’s Fat Cat and listened to the David Bowie? Good times!

I shake myself awake from my reverie and return to the task at hand. Here we go, a carol for Dinosaur Day. Walking in your Footsteps, by The Police, Sting’s musings of humankind’s inevitable march towards a Jurassic-like extinction. Perfect for our preschooler’s first Dinosaur Day! I begin singing.

“Hey, mighty brontosaurus,

Don't you have a lesson for us

Thought your rule would always last,

There were no lessons in your past.”,

I slide the record from its sleeve. I flip to side A. My son, the little one, enters the dining room wearing no pants and a fire fighter helmet on backwards. I momentarily wish I had some Village People on vinyl. I make a mental note to consult eBay. The little one delivers his current signature tag line.

“Can I see?”

I hand over the album jacket.

I am sure that my wife is upstairs far exceeding my efforts. She is probably constructing a scale model of brontosaurus out of chicken bones, each bone color-coded and numbered on a schematic. But I can’t jump straight to track two. Not with this masterwork ode to the collective unconscious. Synchronicity deserves to be listened to as an album. None of this digital download one track nihilism. This much I owe my children. Before we can walk in the footsteps of the dinosaurs we need to explore track 1. Synchronicity I. The sequencer begins its staccato line.

To be continued…