I washed up the dinosaur bones from my daughters vacation and put them outside to look at closer later. And later in the day I'm woken by the landlord and his brother, Italians, out mowing the lawn. I go out to say hi.
G, the landlord, and his bro S, his bro, shirt off and chest bristling, freshly shaven, are chatting, S is apologizing about a bit of row they had the other morning that woke me early and continued throughout the day, loud conversations that managed to use more permutations of the word "FUCK" than I had realized were possible, but they've made up now it seems. They enquire about the rocks strewn about the deck, I explain, S gets excited....
"You mean these are from a dinosaur...? You some kind of archaeologist or something?"
And I explain that they're from a dinosaur, and show him how I knew, how to tell, and explain that the word is paleontologist, ....He's getting excited.
"What kind of dinosaur? Archaeology, that's cool..."
Duckbill, probably, I explain, and don't bother to correct him further...
"Like a giant duck. How big..., do you think, as big as this house?"
And I hazard a guess as to it's size, probably 12 feet....
"A giant duck..." he repeats, and tells his brother G.
"Do you ever go to youtube and look at those videos?" he asks, and now he's on a roll... "The ones about where they find those skeletons of giant people, 30 feet tall, some even 25 feet or 10 feet even..." He's curiously reversed the order of size, dramatically reversing the order of maximum effect, but he's into the subject now, I hum-haw noncommittally...."Aliens" he continues..."You see that video where the UFO comes out of nowhere and zaps the nuclear missile test to the ground?" and he begins to dance around, playing the part of both the nuclear missile and the peace loving UFO "pu...it fires it's lazers, and then goes over here, and pu it fires it's lazers again, and then it disappears off into the sky.....they'll never allow us to have a nuclear war...or the videos with all the aliens they've got in the bunkers?"They got wormholes from the Germans in the second world war, you know how our universe is next to another universe..." and he's explaining with his hands, making bubbles..."And there's a big wormhole ..." and he illustrates a circle, "Like Stargate" I say ironically, and he immediately agrees..."Yeah, just like that, and you just step through and you're in this other universe....what's your email, I'll send you some links, will blow your mind...."
I make my excuses, have to go back inside, resume my work...he stares thoughtfully for a minute over the suburbs in the distance, the infinitely growing and sprawling city....
"You know, a lot of people, they just go to work and come home and eat and go to sleep. They're not curious like us...."