Okay, so has Chwedyk finally flipped his lid or what?
For the record, my lid's been flipped for over half a century. My brain works better with its lid in the "up" position.
Sentimental? You bet!
But wait! There's more —
The big blue theropod with his mouth open, pictured on the other side, was a gift to me from my wife when she returned from a trip to Arkansas. We started calling the little plush guy Axel. From there, I kept wondering why that little guy was smiling with his jaws wide open like that. What's this little guy all about?So I put him in a story called "The Measure of All Things," and from there to "Bronte's Egg," "Tibor's Castle" and the stories I'm working on now.
And two of the other missing dinosaurs are the prototypes of Geraldine and Tibor in the same series of stories.
Prototypes — character studies — sketches — first drafts, but of the 3D variety. So, in a way, they're a part of my literary estate. They're also a bit of history.
And my wife will never forgive me for losing Axel.
Things get lost, I know. We all lose things of personal or eccentric value. Manuscripts. Papers. Letters. I've lost my share. When they're irretrievably lost we have to let them go. But if there's any chance of finding these dinosaurs I have to try.
If you were at Windycon and you saw them, turned them into Lost and Found or picked them up, give me a call or email me.
Many thanks.
Of the four dinosaurs, three are of the brontosaurus variety (four-legged, long necks and small heads) and roughly of about the same size (about 6 to 7 inches long and about 4 to 5 inches high). One is a light brown (most prominent in front of the blue dinosaur). One is a sort of dirty gold color (the one with its back to the camera, with ribbons and a green cap-like thing on its head) and its right side is cut off in the photograph. The third is the two-tone blue Beanie Baby in the inset pic — not the real one but a close match I found on eBay.
The fourth dinosaur is the blue one with its mouth wide open in the photo. It's more of a tyrannosaur-shape (standing on two legs, with shorter forearms) and stands about 12 inches tall. It also has big, sort of clumpy feet, little black eyes which you can't see in the photo because its mouth is so wide open. It also has a Velcro opening on its back, and if you open it up a sort of globe-like thing can be pulled out. I think it was meant to be an educational toy and the globe is meant to represent the world in prehistoric times, but mostly I kept that Velcro shut. The four of them would answer to the names Geraldine, Tibor, Deryl Jean and Axel respectively, if they weren't plush toys and could talk, but they can't.