My wife and I first noticed it when our son was about four years old. He just did not want to wear boys clothing. He would get very sad when we made him wear ‘normal boys cloths’ but we made him wear them anyways. As he grew older he became more insistent that he did not want to wear the clothes we had picked out for him because ‘He was not a boy’.
We really took notice of his behaviour when he was five years old because at this point he had been unhappy for over a year and started to get angry when we told him he was a boy. He started to throw tantrums when we made him wear boys clothing and this is when he first uttered the words he would ‘kill himself’ if he had to wear them.
My wife and I finally decided to let him make his choice on one fateful day when we saw him outside and he was not playing with his friends. He said he just wanted to be himself and he just did not feel like himself if he had to wear the clothes of a boy.
Well that just broke our hearts because we thought, ‘What do we want an unhappy boy or a happy dinosaur?’ Well we decided he could be a dinosaur. He put on his dinosaur outfits and wore them to school and was so happy. He had gotten his way finally. After all the tantrums and bad attitudes and defiance we finally gave in. He or the dinosaur had finally won.
The local school board was all too encouraging. Their own policy stated that it is a person’s choice to be a dinosaur or a human. It has nothing to with science but just how a person feels. They had even stopped using the exclusive term ‘children’ but were now using the more inclusive term ‘animals’ in their classes! The school gave the dinosaur a special desk to accommodate ‘hiz’ tail. They even had a local contractor make all the bathrooms in the school ‘dinosaur accessible’.
Hiz class was given a unit on dealing with diversity and how anyone can choose to be a dinosaur if they want. If someone felt uncomfortable with the dinosaur they were told to wait in the corner until they changed their attitude. Their parents were also offered a class on how to direct their child’s thinking and avoid the term ‘common sense’.
So there you have it another success story for the province and the local schools. Another member of society happy and ready to contribute as the animal he was meant to be. Don’t be surprised if your child comes home wanting to be a dinosaur and thinking it is possible because the provincial government through your local school just told them it was.
A special thank you to our current NDP government for helping to make dinosaurs of us all. May this line of thinking become extinct when we next take to the polls!
Keith Kornelsen
St. Paul
