Team Nina vs. Team Dinosaurs

(Image via Spanish Moss)

After snow "ho-ing", we ate lunch and went to pick up Care Bears (the final link!) from the airport. We went to a local bar for dinner and, of course, lots of drinks. We filled Care Bears in on the (quality) conversations she had missed.

While driving back from snow "ho-ing", we somehow got on the gloomy topic about how the world was going to end. It began when someone was talking about something and then Kate said, "It doesn't matter because the world's going to end in 2012 anyway." For fuck's sake, that's less than 2 years away! I asked her why she thought this and she said she truly believed it because Nostradamus and many psychics who had been right about past catastrophes predicted that many will die in 2012. So Annie asked, "What, like Y2K in 2000?" But Kate answered no, it was going to be something natural like an earthquake or volcano eruption and if not that then a terrorist attack. I was still skeptical because who wants to remain positive and go on with their lives when there's an armageddon looming over their heads? So Kate backed up her claims. She said she truly believed that there would be a mass disaster that would wipe out the human race because, "Think about it," she said, "What happened to the dinosaurs? One day they were all gone. And what about the Mayans? They're all gone too." I thought about it and to be honest, I had never thought about the Mayans before so I don't really know their story and what happened to them. But I have studied dinosaurs for many years in grade school and I replied, "You know, nobody can say for sure what happened to the dinosaurs because everything about them is a theory. No one has ever seen them." Silence. Pause. Jen, who was driving, looked in her rearview mirror and said, "So let me get this straight. Neen, so you're saying you don't believe in dinosaurs?" Silence. It's not that I don't believe in them like I don't believe in the Tooth Fairy (even though The Rock did a pretty convincing portrayal in the Tooth Fairy movie) and Santa Claus, I just think that every thing we know about them is a theory and no one has ever seen them with their eyes. This just blew everyone away. Heads began spinning, arms began waving around. "How can you not believe in dinosaurs??!!" They all repeated in unison. "There is PROOF of them. There are bones and stuff!" I answered, "Sure there have been some bones laying around here and there, but how do we know for sure that we even assembled them correctly? And how to we know what their skin looked like when there's no evidence of skin. They could've all been neon pink for all we know.And how do we know what they ate and which ones were scary carnivores. They could've all been sweet as puppies." I knew I had posed a good argument. I had won over Annie. She was on Team Nonbeliever now. She said, "You know, that's true. I mean, they weren't called Dinosaurs back then. We named them that. We gave them all of these made up names." Silence. OK, so Annie's not a good person to be on my team. But I still had her.

The girls became exasperated with me. I mean how do you argue with an idiot? You'll get nowhere. Kate decided to add to her argument (that the world was ending very soon) by posing another question. "And, think about it, what happened to the Egyptians?" Silence.

"Um. Kate, there's an entire country still full of them, "I answered. We started laughing.

"They're still there, Kate, they just don't live in the pyramids anymore," Jen added.

Kate slunk lower in her seat but she was determined to redeem herself. "No, but I mean, what happened to the Ancient Egyptians?" She clarified her question.

"Um. Well. They died because that was a really long time ago and people don't live that long and now there are modern Egyptians."

It's hard to believe that any of us graduated with honors from college. We would be laughed out of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

So now that Care Bears was up to date on how stupid her friends are we kept the debate going at the dinner table, laughing until our faces turned red and our abs hurt. A man walked over to our table to see what we were all laughing about. We turned to him and said, "Sir, let's get your opinion! Do you believe in dinosaurs?" He looked at our empty glasses and asked how many we have had. He bought us all shots because I'm sure he thought we could solve the problems of the world (or at least the U.S. Healthcare debate) if we had more.

The shots arrived and they filled up a rocks glass all the way to the top. I have never seen a shot so big (and I have seen a lot of shots). We all started laughing, having to take the shot in 3 to 4 gulps. "Riddle me this," Kate asked Jen who has lived in Utah for almost a year, "Why is it that shots can be this large but Nina couldn't order a full sized martini?" My half sized martini must have gone to my head because I was dying laughing. Earlier, I tried to order a dirty martini and the waitress asked me if I wanted a long pour. Jen explained to me that in Utah they can only give you a certain amount of straight liquor without a mixer and you had to pay for a long pour if you wanted more. What. The. Eff? This boggled our minds more than the dinosaurs did.



A few days later, when Kate had her layover at Chicago's O'Hare airport, she texted us this photo with the subject line, "They're real!"



The debate continues...