Millions of years ago the asteroid hit. Enormous mesozoic beasts roamed the earth, foraging for sustenance, mating, exploring the precivilized earth. one day they looked up and saw flaming space rock Chicxulub in the Yucatán peninsula. Oh shit, they thought.

Devastating blow to the earth’s ecology. Smoldering ash and brimstone flew across the skies. Fiery hell rained from the heavens. Killed lots of dinosaurs.

But not all of them. many lived.

Like the chirping of the morning birds on a summer’s dawn, the cacophony of college kids marching to the epicenter of youthful debauchery came right on schedule – 8 PM on a warm Saturday night late in the spring semester. I sighed and crept to my living room windows, took one glance at the parade, and closed the windows to block the invigorating warm breeze of an evening in early May. I sat down at my kitchen table, hungry and tired and beaten and thought maybe, just maybe – I could take a few minutes of break time to find something to eat.

Pantry barren with boxes of rice and pasta and stale special K cereal and a 4lb tub of JIF peanut butter. Fridge empty aside from a jar of my mother’s hot peppers, an expired half gallon of skim milk, and a white styrofoam container of take-out Mexican food that desperately needed to be disposed of. No components of a proper supper. In the freezer – one last frozen stouffers lasagna dinner. This will do, for tonight. I popped it into the microwave and entered in the instructed time. Took the last clean spoon from the drawer – the rest were buried under days and days of unwashed kitchenware stacked like Tetris pieces in the kitchen sink – and shoveled a big scoop of peanut butter into my mouth and washed it down with water.

Walked into my bedroom to search for my comfy, oversized sweatshirt that my mother bought me for Christmas last year. It had this cotton interior. It was huge on me. And it was so cozy. It made me feel warm and loved. It was inscribed on the front, MEDICAL UNIVERSITY CLASS OF 2020, with my school’s colors. My mom, she was so proud of me. I was so proud of me. Everyone was. But I couldn’t find it. All drawers were open; their contents muffled and bunched up. So many articles of clothing were piled on top of the dresser that you couldn’t see the surface any longer. Clothes were strewn about all over the floor. Corner of the mattress had escaped the cover of the bedsheet and poked out. My phone – hundreds of texts from friends that I never cared to answer. I stopped talking to people.

The dinosaurs didn’t all die when the asteroid hit. But. Ash and clouds of carbon debris covered the skies and blocked out the sun.

That’s when they died.