The Dinosaur Game

From the Dinosaur Game to Dinoniche “Pop, I thought of something else to add to my Christmas list.” “What’s that?” I replied in the predawn stillness in which the rest of the family lay yet abed. “An office.” “An office!” I turned from where I stood at the kitchen table to fix my eyes upon the second-grader at the far end of the extended family room. He sat upon the old draftsman’s chair in the light of a desk lamp on his old desk, which consisted of a countertop laid across the top of two three-drawer file cabinets with a space in between to accommodate the chair. His head was turned toward me, though his body was still bent over his elbows and forearms resting on the desk and his left hand still holding his pencil. Before he had broken the morning silence, that hand and pencil had been industriously marking onto three-by-five index cards pictures and words that would illustrate dinosaurs and facts about them for the multitude who must certainly desire to know as much as he desired to know everything about the prehistoric-animal wonders that had populated the land and sea of the very planet he and his now inhabited. “Joseph,” I said, “you’re not going to get an office for Christmas. I was in my twenties before I ever had an office. You have your own desk, and your brother has his little table. Your mother and I had to make due with what room we could get at the family table to do our homework or projects, and we had several brothers and sisters who might need to work at the table at the same time (see “One Big Family”). You’re not going to get an office. You have plenty of room with your desk to do your work.” But he persisted and was perfectly adamant that he needed an office. He explained to me that his desk was just not adequate for all the essential work he had before him to make his dinosaur cards, given that he had to do his homework and all his other projects there too. And yet I remained unmoved. The cards became part of an elaborate game, indecipherable to adults who attempted to play it. Eventually he solved the problem by creating an office just for the dinosaur cards in what he called his under-bed. He would obediently wait until 4:30 a.m., then roll out of bed to under his bed, lie flat on his belly propped up on his elbows and forearms, and go to work on his cards. (The 4:30 start time was a compromise to mollify his mother who would not hear of him getting up at 4:00 or earlier.) I raised up his bed on wood blocks, which gave him more room, and his mother got him some LED lights to attach to the slats that held up his mattress, and he had all he needed to continue his crucial work. In all, he created some 600 dinosaur cards. The cards became part of an elaborate game, indecipherable to adults who attempted to play it. In the game, cards would be laid out all over a table, and then long, thin, irregular strips of paper, that had been cut with a scissors, would be laid out among the cards, and play would commence. On one occasion, on a visit to my parents, they, my brother and his wife, my wife and I, our two sons, and my niece all sat down to play. Though parents and grandparents never had a clue about what was going on, the two boys and, remarkably, their cousin newly introduced to the game, went about play as if it were as obvious as the sun. Fast forward fifteen years. Joseph was now in what was supposed to be his last semester of college. (It was not, but we can come back to that.) He still retained his fascination for and encyclopedic knowledge of prehistoric creatures. In fact, in one class the professor held up a fossil of a nautiloid and began asking questions about it. Joseph held back on answering, as usual, until no one else answered, and then he volunteered the answer. Finally, after he had reluctantly answered all the questions, the professor asked if anyone knew the name of the creature preserved in the fossil. Joseph held out as long as he could, with the professor’s eye fixed on him, before he said, “Gomphoceras.” The professor blurted, “How did you know that?” Joseph shrugged his shoulders. Still incredulous, the professor asked if he had looked at the label on the box. He assured him that he had not. Joseph betrayed a hint of mirth when he summed up the experience, “He was surprised I knew it to the genus level.” Another of Joseph’s professors, a very kind paleontologist, marveled to his mother and me about his knowledge of information related to the ancient past. Finally, the professor bluntly said that he wondered if Joseph ever had any fun. I explained to him that, to Joseph, continually learning, especially about the fauna of the earth across geologic time, was fun. But then I added that he also ran on the track team, played piano, got together with his many and varied friends. Yes, he had plenty of fun. Anyway, well into the spring semester of his senior year, I received a phone call from him that shortly made me glad that he had called me and not his mother. “Pop, remember that dinosaur game I made when I was a kid?” “Yeah, I remember it.” “Well, I was thinking about it, and I thought I could make it into a tabletop miniatures game. So, the other night I wrote up forty pages of directions for it, and I’ve been designing models for it on Blender, and I ordered a 3D printer to print them, and I can playtest the game with the guys here and just keep improving it.” Just what a parent wants to hear with graduation all but in his grasp. “Well,” I said, as my imagination projected my wife’s reaction to such news, “that’s great, but you want to keep in mind that graduation is only a few months away, and you just want to make sure you keep up your grades right to the end. You’re almost done here, and you’ve put in a lot of time and work, and you’ve got a strong average, and you don’t want to throw that away at the end.” And he did inform us, perhaps a little too close to graduation, that he planned not to graduate, even though he had all the credits he needed to do so. He assured me that that would not be a problem, and then launched excitedly back into his plans for the game. Eventually, he would be running two 3D printers in the cross-ventilated empty room in his suite, printing various dinosaur models that he was designing on Blender. He would playtest the game with teammates from the track team, who would help him identify areas that needed improvement. And he would keep making improvements. Apparently, the idea to turn the dinosaur game into a tabletop-miniatures game was born in Michigan’s incomparable Upper Peninsula. We were first made aware of his pending adventure there when Joseph called to let us know that a professor from his college biology department had offered him the chance to work at two different bio-stations that summer. In response to my wife’s reservations, I pointed out that it would be a great opportunity for him to be out on his own, take on several layers of responsibility, spend a good deal of time in unspoiled nature, and do real hands-on work in the field of biology that he loved, all while working for a respectable professor in a dependable environment. Thus did he split his time that summer between biological stations at Rockwell Lake and in the exclusive and unspoiled wilderness of the Huron Mountain Club. At Rockwell Lake he conducted his thesis project involving spiders; fished for and ate bass; spent a good deal of his income on quality food to cook, bake, and eat; and kept up his training, which included running into town on Sundays for church. At the Huron Mountain Club, he and a colleague drove a pickup truck to the farthest extent of the roughest road he had ever been on, then canoed another two-and-a-half miles, then bushwacked their way into the spot where they set up their professor’s experiment, which was eventually destroyed by a bear to render it all fruitless in the end anyway. They also admirably battled the notorious Great Lake’s region mosquito, of which I had warned him. Resolutely eschewing insect repellent, he returned from one outing with over two hundred bites on his back. He and his colleague drove into Marquette and returned with various means to combat the dreaded foe, including a hand-held device that we would hear zap over and over again during the short conversations we could manage with him before the calls would drop. And he was zapping the pesky creatures while inside his place of residence, a historic house hanging out over the lake. He also created boxes of exquisitely mounted insect collections and put them on consignment in a shop in Marquette. That was the latest in a series of saleable products he had made over the years that illustrated things that interested him, like a poster depicting molecular geometry and packs of cards of favorite prehistoric creatures. It was on an excursion to Marquette that he discovered and purchased a Star Wars Legion game in a game store. After playing this game with friends, he realized he could turn the dinosaur game from his childhood into a tabletop miniatures game. Thereafter came the designing, 3D printing, play testing, and improving described above. And he did inform us, perhaps a little too close to graduation, that he planned not to graduate, even though he had all the credits he needed to do so. It seems that he still had a year of eligibility to run track due to the Covid plandemic, and he intended to return for the spring semester of the following year to do so. We were that close. . . . That close. But, as Joseph is wont to do, he spent his time well and constructively. And we, his parents, readjusted, each in our own way. And, to his credit, the youth had made a wise decision. Track was the part of college he valued the most, and he had the best season of his career that spring. And, among all his various endeavors, he kept improving and playtesting the game and developing a business around it. And, in the end, he did graduate, with a degree in biology with a chemistry minor, magna cum laude. And we breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he has launched his game, Dinoniche. That dinosaur game for which the second-grader required an office has come to fruition. And, it is a wonder to behold, and to play. May you or someone you know find it so. Thank you, P. A. Ritzer Please restack, like, share, comment as you feel inclined. Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This Substack is reader-supported. 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