The Baby Dinosaur

One summer when I was about 7 years old, we had moved to New Mexico. The kid next door showed me a horned toad he had in a box and told me it was a baby dinosaur and would grow to the size of an elephant. It was weird looking and I had never seen one before so I believed him. I asked him if I could have it and he said he would sell it to me. When I asked him how much he wanted he asked me how much I had. I ended up giving him .30 cents, my ice cream truck money. When I showed it to my dad he told me it was a horned toad and they were common around the area and that was as big as it would get, we later saw another one on the wall in our back yard. I felt like a chump. I took it to school in my lunchbox hoping to find a chump of my own but most of the kids had lived in New Mexico all of their lives and knew what a horned toad was. I finally found a sucker during recess who had recently moved to the state. He was all excited about owning a baby dinosaur and was more than happy to fork over his lunch money for it, a .50 cent piece, we called those big quarters in those days. I was happy too, I made a .20 cent profit.