Thursday, October 16, 2008

The Barnacle of My Imagination

When I was a child, I collected seashells and rocks. These were fairly easy and cheap things for a child to collect, so my parents encouraged my collecting habit.

The prize of my collection was a barnacle. I don't remember where we got it, but we didn't buy it. We found it somewhere on a beach and it came to rest in a special spot on my shelf.

I liked this barnacle for two reasons. One, I had seen live barnacles on piers and ships, but never a hollow shell of a dead barnacle. Two, on the base of it was something that looked like a tiny skeleton. This skeleton looked to me like a very small dinosaur.

In my imagination, I owned a tiny T-Rex or similar dinosaur. I imagined the impressed adults when they finally discovered my tiny little dinosaur fossil (as I saw it). Credited with the discovery of a new species, I would stand with my little barnacle in my hand while people took my picture and credited me for knowing how important this was to science.

Although I have long stopped collecting shells, I still have a nice grouping of them displayed in one room. Since my family lived in the Philippines for two years when I was about eight years old, I have some very nice shells in my collection. I enjoy looking at them, as many of them are very beautiful.

Nestled in amongst the flashier pieces is the little barnacle, skeleton still intact. I doubt it is an important find or a little dinosaur (fossil or otherwise), although I still don't know what, in fact, it is. For me, it stands for my childhood, full of wonder and imagination, when I would gaze at a little skeleton-like item on the bottom of a barnacle and dream of great things.

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If you know what my barnacle is, please let me know. It won't spoil the memory, and I've always been curious about its true nature.

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