The dig

I remember, more than anything, the sand. My brother and I for hours would submerge ourselves in a dilapidated sandbox whose elevation shifted day to day as we poked about for evidence to validate our obsessions.

“I want to be a paleontologist,” my brother told everyone, struggling to pronounce the longest word he knew past one side of a pacifier.

It wasn’t long, however, before we did find something buried beneath our amateur dig. Although it was dirty and broken and nothing like dinosaur bones, there actually was something hiding beneath all that sand and dirt.

Whether the home’s previous owners had forgotten him or he’d been planted for our benefit by our father, for a few brief minutes we felt like the most accomplished archeologists in the world.

And although more polished facsimiles of him lay piled in bins in our basement, this is the proudest action figure we’ve ever owned.