Tatum's True Tales
the right place at the right time: my photo taken for a book!...

Dinosaur in a Haystack



I joined my third-grade classmates
on a trip of all-day fun,
to visit the Smithsonian
in 1961.

The place was filled with everything
from skeletons to cars,
we'd end up seeing parts of space,
from Mercury to Mars.

I lagged behind my class awhile
to visit a display,
when two adults approached
to snap a pic and walked away.

I thought no more about it,
so I caught up with the class,
thinking they were snapping
the display behind the glass.

Well, forward, twenty-seven years,
I'm browsing through bookstores
to find my son a special gift:
a book on dinosaurs.

While thumbing through the second book,
a photo caught my eye;
a scene from many years ago
that made me want to cry!

I'm standing there on field trip day
and staring through the glass
admiring all the dinosaurs,
while lagged behind my class.

I'm skeptical of happenstance
and flukes that make no sense.
I think that this was meant to be
and no coincidence!