Jurassic Jacket

When Spielberg's Jurassic Park released in 1993, we got to watch it in our country in 1995 (it was an era previous to digitization and film rolls were dispatched by hand) and I was five years old.


Obviously, I was scared to death, even though I could barely understand what was going on. I got the gist though: being chased by ginormous meat-eating lizards twice the size of a normal car is NOT cool.


Then came the nightmares which inevitably involved me being gobbled by a T-Rex or a Velociraptor. I assume it got really bad and my parents got worried.


So they took me to a fair where they had moving Dino models, life-sized. I never understood why they thought this encounter would help, it just caused me to throw a fit.


However, the next attempt was more fruitful than the previous one. I don't specifically remember who it was, but my parents bought me a jacket. It was purple with red collars and cuffs. And it had the Jurassic Park logo. You know, the one they had on the movie poster and on the automatic cars and all the merchandise.


Strangely, maybe because it was so comfy and warm and cool, the Jacket instilled a sense of protection in me. In my befuddled childhood brain, the Jacket transformed all dinosaurs into cuddly teddy-like creatures. I now presume that this Jacket is the root to my Dino-obsession.

Wearing this Jacket, I could now watch the Jurassic Park three times in a row, without flicking an eyelid. My nightmares turned into over-imaginative tea-parties with "civilized" dinos, who found belching offensive. Once I even dreamed that I had a pet dinosaur whom I had to send to a pet-school, but it was weeping when I went to see it off!


Ever since then, I've watched Jurassic Park almost a hundred and twenty times. I can almost recite the script off by heart.


And, I wore that Jacket till I was thirteen, when it started flaking out like multi-coloured dandruff.


I never owned another jacket that came anywhere close to that one.