Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was like all the other little girls, or maybe she wasn’t…
She had long blonde hair adorned with natural curls.
She wore red glasses, which made her even sweeter.
Like all the other girls, she loved stories about princesses.
She adored ballerinas and dreamed of becoming one some day.
She loved wearing little skirts and dresses in every possible colour and pattern, just like all girls.
She adored playing with dolls and Barbies, just like every girl.
But wait.
Something wasn’t quite right.
Her obsession wasn’t princes, but nothing more and nothing less than dinosaurs.
How can a girl be interested in dinosaurs?
Nobody could understand it.
But she didn’t care.
Little by little she learned about them: the species, their features, what they ate and what they didn’t, how they defended themselves against other dinosaurs and lots of other interesting things.
Whatever she didn’t like about them, she would change and add to with her vivid imagination. And so the T-Rex went from the most dangerous dinosaur known to her best friend, who is only afraid of other people because they don’t understand him. He won’t hurt her, because he loves her. Because she loves him too.
She refused to accept the fact that dinosaurs are no longer alive as the only possible truth. No, maybe dinosaurs still live today, we just don’t see them, because we are afraid, and because they are afraid of us.
And just yesterday, while she was walking through the forest with her mum, she thought the tracks in the wet ground were the footprints of a small T-Rex. Right there, right in the forest behind the house. And no, he is no threat to the other animals that live there either, he loves them. He became a vegetarian so as not to hurt anyone, and there are plenty of leaves in the forest for everyone anyway, aren’t there?
The only thing she didn’t understand was why the other girls, and the odd boy too, didn’t want to play dinosaurs with her.
They said they were scared.
And she would try with all her might to explain that dinosaurs weren’t as scary as they looked, quite the opposite.
Unfortunately, to her great disappointment, her friends never showed any enthusiasm. Even the kindergarten teacher explicitly forbade her to take her constant companions, without whom she never left the house, out of her backpack, so as not to frighten the other children.
But why? They were just her friends who didn’t want to hurt anyone. And they were so small, and only came to life in play and with the help of imagination.
Although crushed by the disapproval of others, her love for these great creatures never faded. In the end, she would even rather play alone with her dinosaurs than let anyone insult or hurt them.
And you see, what’s interesting is that whenever she showed up in her pink tulle dress with a doll in her hands, all the girls wanted to play with her. They would come up to her in the park and the game would go on for hours. Until she, hoping that now that she had their attention she could bring her bumpy friends into the game too, took one of them out. The dolls love them, so why wouldn’t her friends, right?
But that’s where the game would come to an abrupt end.
And she didn’t quite understand why, when she showed up in the very same dress, but with the mummy T-Rex in her hands instead of a Barbie, those very same girls wouldn’t even think of playing with her.
And the boys? With them, things worked a little differently.
Some of them did want to play with her and her Triceratops, but only when she wasn’t wearing the fluffy pink dress, but a Batman T-shirt and little grey trousers, and when she had tied her curls into a ponytail and hidden them under a cap.
That confused her even more.
How can things change so quickly?
She is herself every single day! She doesn’t become someone else because of what she wears or which toys she chooses. And yet, depending on that, others treat her completely differently.
Strange, these children.
And then one day, through the window, she saw a girl from the building across the street, in a red dress just like hers, tulle and bows and all, sitting in the sand and playing with, of all things, diggers.
She walked over hesitantly, afraid of being rejected again, but she plucked up the courage to ask whether her Stegosaurus could take a ride in the girl’s big yellow digger. The girl’s eyes lit up, full of hope.
And so, from that very day, the two of them sit in the sand every afternoon in their brightly coloured princess dresses, building hiding places for dinosaurs with the big yellow digger and the blue and grey trucks, so that they have somewhere to shelter from the cold in winter.
And the other children?
They watch them from the sidelines and quietly dream that they too could bring out into the open, the boys their dolls and the girls their race cars, and play together freely, without any judgement or reproach from adults and other children.
Although it may take a long time before they find the courage, or maybe it won’t…
S-Mama
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