Page 92 of Flirtasaurus
“Nothing! It’s a fantastic name. See, Ralph…” I’m not quite sure why he’s directing this story at Ralph, but okay. “Our last name is FitzGerald. And I always thought it would be a hoot to have a son one day who I name Scott, so anytime his name comes up with his enemies, they’d say something like ‘Who are you talking about, Scott FitzGerald? Oh, ef Scott FitzGerald!’ Get it? You get it?”
“Are you fucking serious?!” Scott says, incensed. “That’s why you named me Scott?”
“Yes! You knew that! Everyone knew that!” Dad says, seeming sincerely surprised by his reaction.
“Oh, Ken,” Mom says. “You should have told me.”
“I thought I did! Ah well, nothing to be done about it now. So Lopey, the question I had for you…”
“Yes, Dad, what is it?”
“There’s a dinosaur calledKentrosaurus?” he bellows.
“Uh. Yeah. There is.”
“How have you not told me this before now? That’s my namesake! My name is Ken,” Dad reminds Ralph. “You should always call me Ken.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, Ken. You mentioned that a few times.”
“Good, good. Lopey?” Dad looks at me like I’ve done him a serious wrong.
“Sorry, Dad. Guess I just didn’t spot the connection between you and a prehistoric herbivore before.”
“Well, get me caught up, baby! What did that fella look like? He was one of the sexy ones, wasn’t he? Tell me he was one of the sexy ones.”
“I don’t know, Dad. Which dinosaurs would you say were the sexy ones?”
“Uhhhh… Brontosaurus with that long and girthy neck?”
“Ugh, the word girth is the worst.” Mark nearly gags. Poor guy is only eighteen, so he still lives in the house with our parents and all their antics. It can’t be easy.
“T-Rex with all that male dominance?”
“Dad, you do know that there were female Tyrannosaurus Rexes too, yeah?”
“Huh. Course. Never thought about that, but yeah, I guess there would have to be, wouldn’t there?”
Does my father actually look embarrassed?
“Don’t feel bad, Ken,” Ralph says. “When I was a kid, I thought all dogs were boys, and all cats were girls.”
“Come on, no, you didn’t!” I say. He kicks me gently under the table and gives me a look that seems suspiciously like a “be nice, Calliope” look, one I’ve been getting from nearly everyone I know since I was a kid.
I address my dad. “Kentrosaurus is a cousin of sorts to Stegosaurus. You know Stegosaurus, yeah?”
“Course! The guy with the bony plates all down his back.”
“Right. Yeah, so Kentrosaurus looked somewhat similar to Stegosaurus, but instead of plates, he had huge spikes down his lower back and hips.”
“You hear that Suzie Q?Kentrosaurus has a huge spike on his hips. We know a little something aboutthatnow, don’t we?” And when my father punctuates his sentence with a single pump of his hips in my mother’s direction, I actually vomit in my mouth a tiny bit.
“Oh sweetheart, stop looking so sheepish,” Mom blushes and reprimands me. “How do you think you got here?”
“I bet ole Kentrosaurus was constantly on the attack and tearing into dino flesh, huh?” Dad says with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy.
“Actually, Dad, he was a toothless, narrow-skulled, beaked dinosaur who could basically only eat low-lying plant sources that ended up close to his head.”
“A beak, huh?”
