When I was about ten years old, runnin' in the woods of Eastern Missouri, I wanted to grow up to be this guy.

I think I found this picture in a big book on natural history. He's got it just about made, doesn't he? All the critters you could ever hunt, resulting in a casual, unhurried existence, and all those wide opened spaces to live in. And I mean WIDE OPEN. There were maybe less than 300,000 people on the whole planet when this dude was lookin' for a good spot for his deer stand. Imagine that.



Before that, I remember wanting to be one of these critters. No, not the guy. The Allosaurus. Sheesh!

A savage beast, I would'a been. Blood thirsty. Nobody would'a screwed with me at all. Nobody. We're talkin' APEX predator.



Later on... OK, at about the same time, I also wanted to be one of these dudes. Seein' as how this is the Battle of Hastings, and the dudes on the left won and then got to divide up all the land in Britain and live like kings for generations, I guess I'd be on that side. Having said that though, the dudes on the right were pretty cool too.

They should've won. Some of their buds didn't get the memo though. They broke their shield wall one too many times and went runnin' down the hill, thinkin' everything was over. Not! Next thing you know their chief is takin' an arrow in the face and gettin' hacked up. And I mean professionally hacked up. It just wasn't his day.



I also wanted to be this guy. Hell, I'd still love to be this guy. That headdress is so friggin' cool. They had a pretty nice life too, livin' larger in the great wide open spaces, back before the White folks spread like a pestilence on the land and screwed it up for them. Too bad about that, but what are ya gonna do? Again, Apex Predators, us White folks is. Apex!



Then there was the time, when I was a teenager, when all I wanted was to be able to ride around in one of these big dudes. Battle of Kursk, field of Prokhorovka, goin' muzzle to muzzle with some Mongolian draftee in a T34. I was gonna join the army after high school and see if they'd let me drive an M60A3, but dad talked me out of it. He was probably right. It would'a been a tight fit.

I guess I had a vivid imagination back in the day. Guess I still do. Ya think? Cheers.