Richard Attenborough

[Martin Hash]

My granddaughter, Nico, turned 3, and my daughter, Heather, had her Jurassic Park-themed birthday party at our house, both because we have a big house, but also mostly because we have a 10-foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton that looks into the guest bathroom. Not only that, we still have the Jurassic Park toys she and her younger brother bought as kids with the money they’d saved. (That stuff is worth more now than when they bought it!) Heather asked me to dress like John Hammond, the owner of Jurassic Park. I vaguely remembered who that was but I had to look it up; it was Richard Attenborough with a white flat-brimmed hat & beard, dressed in all white, using a cane. I also found a picture of him on an episode of Family Guy.

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Richard Attenborough

I don’t wear a beard but fast-growing beards are in my DNA so I stopped shaving that day, just over 2 weeks to beard up. My wife took me to a thrift store to buy the white apparel & cane; I already had the hat, shoes & socks. The shirt was a little tight but it was the only white shirt available. (When did white shirts go so far out of fashion you can’t find them secondhand?) Nico was dressed as a fairy; like I said, she’s just turning 3, she doesn’t know there aren’t any fairies in Jurassic Park. She sure loves playing with the toys though. The party went great; over 50 people, half of them less than 5 years old. It was probably the first time any of them had got to try and break open a pinata.

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Martin & Nico, Heather & Nico