<i> T. rex</i> and Friends--Not Just Kid Stuff

My 3 1/2-year-old is sound asleep, clutching his latest cuddle toy--a 16-inch plastic Diplodocus, with hose neck, square teeth, trunk feet and purple belly.

Ah, bliss. A boy and his . . . dinosaur.

This particular creature (“Dip-PLAW-duh-cuss,” my son insists, correcting my pronunciation) lived 150 million years ago, give or take an eon, but at our house, he’s the dinosaur of the moment--friendly, herbivorous, helpful, the kind of dinosaur you’d like to have around if your cat got stuck in a tree or you just needed a long neck to cry on.

A month ago, I wouldn’t have cared about any of this. But nowadays we’re living a kind of Jurassic Hill Street Blues. The dinosaurs at our house act out parallel emotional dramas under a 3 1/2-year-old stage director.

The story thus far: Tyrannosaurus likes to crush houses. Triceratops wishes it had as many horns as Pentaceratops, who wants to be as fast as Galliminus, who may in fact be a flesh-ripper, but who’s really a cool little guy if you get to know him. . . .

The fact that my kid has dinosaur on the brain has nothing to do with the dino-hype surrounding Friday’s release of the Steven Spielberg film “Jurassic Park.”

It has everything to do with the fact that he is 3 1/2, the age when dinosaurs, like it or not, happen to kids.

It’s sort of like peanut butter and puberty--unavoidable, universal, maybe even genetic. Hey, you’re 3 1/2. It’s Iguanodon Time!

Kids like the fact that dinosaurs are scary but safe, dino-experts say. The complicated names give them a verbal kick. (“Stegosaurus,” says my son. “Allosaurus . . . Spinosaurus . . . What-a-lotta-saurus.”)

But most of all, the creatures emerge as emotionally complex individuals--that is, at least to the 3-year-old brain, which is exploding with limbic-system activity, the stuff that teaches you how to laugh and scream and cry.

This morning’s drama: Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus argue over who should rule the couch. On the sidelines sits unassuming Stegosaurus, whose feelings get hurt if you mistake him for a monster. It’s easy to do given the horns on his head and the spiny plates on his back. (“He’s not scary,” my son tells me. “He’ll take care of you.”)

The rest of the world has dinosaur on the brain as well. Packing our Pachycephalosaurus in the car, we navigate the dino-cultural landscape: billboards for dinosaur parks; toy-store displays of dinosaur puzzles, candies and posters; the omnipresent Barney, “Jurassic” overkill.

We see a spate of dinosaur magazine covers, great cutouts for the bedroom wall. But wait--this isn’t kids’ stuff. It’s dinosaur-as-symbol-of-the-extinction-of-everything: Corporate America, the environment, the human race. This is scarier than Tyrannosaurus. This is . . . Metaphorasaurus.

What’s happening?

Dino-synchronicity, says zoologist Anne Monk of Marine World Africa USA, a Northern California theme park with a new dinosaur exhibit.

Three forces are converging, Monk explains, and the high-profile Spielberg film is just riding the crest.

First, a new and fairly huge generation of 3- to-6-year-olds is discovering dinosaurs--a longtime fascination that started up again in a big way in 1988 with Spielberg’s dino-blockbuster “The Land Before Time.”

Next, their parents are getting dino-conscious just as paleontology is doing an about-face, with the latest high-tech research blasting away the dinosaur myths of their youth. No, dinosaurs weren’t cold-blooded, dim-witted, slow, drab or necessarily unpleasant.

At the same time, all of us have survival in mind: The spotted owl, General Motors, Spaceship Earth, you name it--the dinosaur is the perfect poster reptile for what happens when you can’t keep it together.

“Why do they have to die?” my son wants to know every time he watches his “Dinosaur Dozen” video. His lips quiver. He wants to hold my hand until the “Suddenly Died Away” song is over and the plastic dinosaurs stop plopping over onto their sides.

As the video song suggests, it was probably a meteor blast that altered the atmosphere. But it may have been earthquakes. Or massive volcanoes. As the song says, Nobody really seems to know, even to this day . . .

How do I tell him that whatever did in the dinosaurs might hold the key to our own existence. . . . Or that, thanks to capitalism, there are probably more dinosaurs roaming the Earth today then there were millions of years ago. . . .

But wait, he’s too busy to hear. Stegosaurus wants to be King of the Couch after all. He brings along his friend Diplodocus for protection. . . .