A Dinosaur? By: Charles Petersen One spring morning I woke up about an hour earlier than normal and, wondering what had woken me, glanced out the window. To my surprise, I saw what looked like a dinosaur out in the fields nearby. I rubbed my eyes and thought, "You must just be a bit too tired," and went to take a shower. When I got out of the shower I went upstairs to get my Instant Breakfast when, what did I see, yet another dinosaur. "Man," I thought, "you must have stayed up a bit too late last night." I turned around and made my Instant Breakfast. I sat down at the table, turned on ESPN and slowly drank it all down. Seeing that I still had over forty minutes to get ready, I decided to read the paper. The front page headline screamed, "Aliens land in Washington!." "Hmmm," I thought, "maybe those dinosaurs I thought I was imagining were actually aliens. Nahh, somebody's just playing a prank on me. This newspaper was probably just planted. After all, there wasn't anything on ESPN about aliens. I decided that the best course of action would be to catch this prankster while I still could. Therefore, I devised a plan. I would turn on my computer downstairs and have it play several recordings of my voice. Once the clown came to my window to try to scare me, I would jump up from behind and take off its mask. I made my preparations and for an extra touch, brought chuck, my dog, out to help stop the prankster. Chuck and I crouched down in a hole out of sight from the window and waited for whatever would come. After a few minutes with nothing happening I started to wonder whether all this stuff was real or whether maybe I was dreaming. "What was I doing last night?" I wondered. "Oh, that's right, I watched The Lost World!! I must be dreaming!" Suddenly I heard this voice in the back of my mind. It was saying, "We have come to assimilate you, do not resist, you will be destroyed." I ran back into the house in fear and woke my sister and mom. I yelled in at them in an unintelligible stream of words until they finally got what I was saying. They told me I was just dreaming and to go back to sleep, after all I didn't usually get up for another thirty minutes. Realizing that I was just being hysterical I walked down to my room and tried to go back to sleep. I just laid there for thirty minutes when I got up and went to school. When I got to school I got through advisory, I.U. and keyboarding but when I got to IPS the weirdest thing happened. I went up to Mr. Rice to ask for some burner fuel when he suddenly metamorphosed into what appeared to be one of the dinosaurs I thought I saw that morning. I woke up to my alarm playing some stupid music which I promptly turned off and fell back asleep. When I woke up again I remembered this very odd dream. Mr. Rice, a dinosaur? Depends on how you look at it!!