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MissUnderstood Me
By Julie Sherman
Not all dragons are fire-breathing, terrifying, scaley, menacing creatures. Folklore and fairytales have given us a bad name and have ruined our reputations.
Some of us are quite nice. Some are even meek. Some are mothers who just want to care for their young draglings in the dark, clammy caves of our homes. Others are literally party animals and want to romp and roll in the mountains, scratching our backs on the rough terrain. And most of us are kind.
Many of us go around helping other dragons fend off bully dragons who flap their immense, scabrous wings close to other dragons’ faces and blow smoke through their enormous nostrils and balls of fire through their mammoth mouths. We are descendants of pterodactyl and t-rex, so we get our wide mouths from the latter and our flying chops from the former. But we are not all nasty, dangerous monsters.
One day I was minding my own business, clomping around the bluffs by the white-capped seas, taking down a few trees along the way, and I saw two humans on a large red cloth mat lying in the sun. They had a small dog with them and it started barking wildly staring in my direction. I did not eat the dog. And even though I don’t like dog, I did not breath fire on it.
The two humans shielded their eyes from the glaring sun and looked up. There they saw my curious face tilting this way and that as I stared at them. They shrieked and screamed and made such a fuss. I was just looking. I guess my smile appeared to convey that I was ready to breathe fire because they scrambled to their feet and began running away, leaving everything behind them, including the dog and red plaid mat. I didn’t do anything but watch them. One of them tripped, but the other just kept going. I would never have done that. We are actually very much like elephants in that we help our kin get out of mud pits and sinking sand when our wings are exhausted from the struggle.
We suffer too. We sigh. We exhale flameless. We have our soft side, yet even after millions of years, we are so tragically misunderstood.
Julie Sherman is a long-time Petaluma resident who enjoys writing, reading, music, travel, and attending live theater. She is the mother of opera singer Camille Sherman and music producer Emily Sherman, and has been married for 35 years to bassist Jeff Sherman.
