there really is always room for jello.

Remember that cute scene towards the end of Jurassic Park I where Tim and Lex Murphy are taken back to the main building and they start digging into the buffet feast? And then a velociraptor sneaks up behind them in silhouette? And Lex has a big, fat spoonful of green Jello, and she starts shaking because she's scared?

When my brother and I were kids, we used to always act out that scene every time our mom made something for dinner that required the use of a spoon for eating. We used to hungrily shovel spoonful after spoonful into our mouths, periodically smiling broadly at each other between mouthfuls. Then, without warning, one of us would pause right before the spoon entered our mouths, and the smile would slowly fade off our faces. Our hands would start shaking wildly, always ending in whatever we were eating falling off our spoon and splattering back onto the plate. We would cackle in laughter - our parents so stunned to see us getting along and laughing at a mutually innocent antic that they just ignored the mess. And then we'd do it again, each time the smiling and shaking getting more and more dramatic until our food was flung off our spoons before it got anywhere near our mouths.

I used to love green Jello, and I ate it rather frequently. (That's what you're left with when you have a family who loves to serve holiday cakes and pies for dessert, but you're not really a big sweets fan.) Every time I ate it, I thought of my brother and I acting like idiots at the dinner table and cracking up about it. I haven't eaten green Jello in years, but when I saw that AMC was playing Jurassic Park I tonight, I knew I had to watch just long enough to get to the legendary food scene. I tuned in pretty close to the beginning, but I decided to watch the whole thing because it really is a great movie - let's be honest. For over an hour, I sat on my couch with a huge smile on my face, just anticipating the hilarity to come. It felt like those days leading up to Christmas when the end of school was in plain sight, you knew your parents had already started shopping and those gifts were hidden somewhere in the house, and you could almost taste that turkey and those mashed potatoes.

And finally the scene came. And then it was over. And I seemed to remember it being a lot longer and more important - a lot more dramatic. But I guess it's just one of those things that you glorify as a child... something you build up to such unattainable standards that even the real deal can't hold a candle to your imagination.

But that's okay. Because it's only about forty days until Easter, and I'm going to ask my mom to make me some green Jello for dessert. And I'm going to resurrect that old gem for my brother, and we're going to cackle and repeat it over and over again until it's larger than it ever was before. And then it'll be ours again.