Is this a museum? Looks like the Exploratorium in San Francisco--pools, ladders, and platforms with a maze of hands-on science games under a Neoclassical stone shell (well, cheap concrete, really. But with columns and angels).

My mother crawls up. I don't mean walking slowly, I mean crawls. You see, she's a dinosaur expert, and she's trying to figure out how two major groups moved. So she's acting them out. Hard work! She can crawl like a crocodile, but some two-legged types like T. Rex are a problem: backward knees, like a chicken, and a tilted posture. Bending forward helps but isn't enough: no tail to balance with or use as a third leg when standing still.

So mostly Mom sticks to the gait she CAN manage: scuttles around like a lizard. I watch her crawl up a ladder and over the lip of a pool and have to admit "She's gotten pretty good." Paint my mom green and give her a tail and she'd make a respectable croc.

I try it--skitter up a ladder to a higher terrace. Not bad! Is crawling in our blood?

On this upper level, I meet a mentor of mine. Tell her about the gait issue, show off my gaits. I think I could do that biped dino gait despite the knee and tail problems. Tilt my torso forward but shift the weight mentally back to my hips... I've had practice--I've been so many animal people in dreams, when I'm often not fully biped, more a reared-up quadruped. All that builds your lower back muscles, shifts your balance. Well, my mom has her specialty, I have mine...

NOTES ON WAKING UP

• Study dino gaits = study GATES! Bill Gates. The mildly autistic genius billionaire owner of Microsoft, the biggest capitalist dinosaur out there. I too am mildly autistic--and Gates teaches me that we autistics CAN succeed.
• T. Rex and other birdlike dinos = standing up for myself, following urges and letting others take care of themselves. Carnivores can't afford guilt.
• Lizard/crocodilian crawling = indirect, begging, stealth, sneaking, opportunism? Or am I slandering crocs again? That folk myth of crocodile tears, I guess.
• My mom can't manage to stand up honestly so she reverts to a familiar gait she CAN do perfectly: crawling abjectly!
• I'm not my mom, I CAN manage to stand up for myself. But I don't try often! Am I afraid to be above my mom?
• ACTION: I'm better off clumsily following my urges than flawlessly crawling.

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