I suppose the one constant rule of childhood memories is that if you didnt get in a retrospectively horrifying near-death situation, or if you werent punished extensively and painfully, then you dont really remember them. I remember this one exceedingly well because it has ample servings of both. Mostly the punishment one though.

The whole incredible sequence of events took place when I was at the tender age of seven, in year two at Claremont Primary School. My teacher was named Miss Riley, and Im almost positive I was in the only year she ever taught before the education department dismissed her for not teaching us anything, or some equivalent misdemeanor. As a result of her monumental flaws, I remember very little from that year, excepting this particular spectacle. And a spectacle it was.

At the back of the classroom was a large, elongated table with a sunken surface, about eight inches deep. This was filled with a mixture of sand, stones, Lego, dinosaurs, and for some eternally inexplicable reason Mutant space mice from Mars. I reasoned that Miss Riley must have been encouraging us to take up career paths in paleontology or architecture or at the very least in strategic military alien mouse extermination. I was not the kind of kid who ever was, not ever will be interested in the first two. As for option numbered three, Miss Riley kept thwarting most of our attempts to develop any real skill in that area.

So in addition to this important feature I also had a good friend named Will who I later forgot to talk to for 5 years. We were like two peas in a pod. A large and spacious pod with lots of sand and dinosaurs in it perhaps, but a pod none the less. Will very much wanted to be a paleontologist or a dinosaur, as he was one of the sorts of children that could remember how to spell Plesiosaur and had understood the amount of research that went into Jurassic Park. He had glow-in-the-dark models of dinosaur skeletons and a big blow-up Stegosaur hanging from his roof. He also loved to fight them to the death in the Riley Cretaceous period sandpit of blood.

It was on this fateful day that we discovered the benefits and pitfalls of adding water to the sand. Though this had no real influence on the tragedy to follow it did make the spectacle all the more unique and staining. The dinosaurs battled. The waters of the floods raged. The mutant mice from another world strategically positioned themselves on the floor near the blackboard where we had thrown their carcasses after a Pterodactyl attack. Then we had a good idea.

Will and I needed to make a sheer cliff face of tremendous proportions because that is exactly what all children feel the need to do when dinosaurs kill one another. Its an instinctual thing. So we wedged a few files and some blackboard erasers under two of the end legs. We may have even thrown in a space rodent for good measure. The warring reptile slaughter went on. It did not go on for long.

By some caprice of fate, a child whose name I was too pre-occupied to commit to memory came flying quickly through the air, propelled by a young man partaking in the kind of activities wholesome dinosaur murdering students such as myself would never have dreamt of. He struck the table. In normal circumstances this would have done more damage to the boys head than to the classroom, but the precarious placement of the cliff enabling blocks led to a tremendous explosion of sand, dinosaurs, un-named boy and table.

It was exactly as you would have expected it to be. Right down to the way the mice hit the suitably shocked Miss Riley in the stomach. So I really dont need to explain it. Suffice to say there was a watermark on the carpet for years and a couple of very embarrassed looking youths.

It was not the best day to be a small plastic dinosaur. They very rarely are. Made In Taiwan what was written on his tail and thus Made in Taiwan was what the other dinosaurs called him. Mad for short. He was feeling somewhat detached as he often did on Thursdays. Thursdays meant almost a whole week of greasy children with high-pitched voices ramming his head into a sand dune. Thursdays were undoubtedly his least favorite day.

Mad was reclining in the sunshine on this particular morning occasionally baring his teeth chauvinistically at some lady stegosaurs and glancing furtively around in case the big rats with antennae came back. He was cool. As cool as a recumbent cucumber in an Eskimos esky. There was a certain reputation and finesse involved with being a dinosaur. You didnt see too many of them around these days.

He sighed. A long deep sigh that resounded across the sunken grotto of rocks and childrens hands that he called his home. Ugly, ugly beasts were those humans. They had their nose in precisely the wrong place and those little wiggly strands of fluffy stuff coming out of their heads wouldnt charm a desperate Diplodicus. "One day," Mad said to no one in particular, "I shall roam wild."

Made In Taiwan was about to suck some air through his teeth in a manner implying his distaste and disgust, when a most unpleasant occurrence occurred. Spluttering and choking and swearing and roaring were the key features of the dinosaurs response. They seemed to go unnoticed over the heads of the gleeful human offspring who were now chirping and sculpting his tanning niche into a riverbank though.