Long ago. Before you were born. Before your parents and their parents were born. Before the birth of the old people that the great-great grandparents of everyone you’ve ever met met when they were small children.

And not only that! Before the birth of this nation whose rules, laws, organizations, systems, and notions you live within.

And not only that! We’re talking about a time before the beginning of this English language that your thoughts swim through as if it were mind-water.

But that’s nothing at all! Because we’re talking about a day before the invention of the ancient ancestor of all Indo-European languages; and so we’re talking about a time long before that now-forgotten language evolved into the Greek, Italian (think Italian, French, Spanish, …), Iranian (including also far-flung Sanskrit and Hindu), Celtic (still spoken by a few hardy souls in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), German (English is a Germanic language), Armenian, Balto-Slavic (think Russian, Polish, and so on down the Eastern Block), and Albanian (all by itself these days, like Armenian) language groups.

Actually, that’s nothing at all, because the language that eventually evolved into English was first spoken only like maybe 5,000 years ago; and we’re talking about a day that happened before the first modern human ever walked the earth, which scientists figure happened about 100,000 years ago in Africa, and some Biblical fundamentalists figure happened about 5,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden, which they figure was somewhere in what is now the Middle East.

I don’t remember when this story happened. It happened in dreamtime. It happened in everywhen and everywhere. It happened yesterday, today, tomorrow.

I don’t remember when this story happened. I don’t remember when the crocodile told the alligator that he’ll see you later and the alligator told the crocodile after a while.

There was a mist across the land on this day. And everything was covered in a cool fine mist that felt like a light rain that froze in the sky and became a cloud through which everyone walked.

On this day when this story happens, everyone is gathered together in a picnic on a sunny day with red and white checkered cloths spread out over the bright green grass under the wide broad arms of the old oak tree, with wicker picnic baskets and people in nice summertime outfits sprawled out on them. Nobody notices that mist coating them, nobody notices the dampness in their lungs. Nobody notices the water droplets beading in their hair, on their eyelashes, at the corners of their eyes and lips, on their pretty dresses and smart slacks and dress shirts. Nobody notices that they are laughing and chatting and chomping in a cloud.

From the cave near the picnickers a dragon came rushing. It was a long, wingless dragon with a big mustache like the dragons that dance to gold drum beats in Chinese New Year when it is cold in New York City and you can see your breath and hear the cymbals.

The dragon came rushing on its four legs with its long scaly body shaking from side to side behind its giant head with sharp teeth. The dragon was snorting steam but it looked like the mist that no one noticed and so no one saw it or noticed that it was snorting steam out of its nostrils.

Some people leapt to their feet, either to turn and face the dragon with looks of stern resolve behind their dukes which were up and ready to jab hook and uppercut this great monster back into its cave, or to run away up into the trees or the hills or down to dive into the river and maybe swim safely to the other shore where there wasn’t a rampaging dragon dancing crooked with its long body flying off in various disjointed directions like you see ritually during Chinese New Year celebrations.

Some people just looked up and continued eating whatever they were already eating, be it fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, side salad with or without onions and with or without cucumbers, a bit of cheese, a sip of reddest wine, a bit of root beer made from real roots and with no added sugar or artificial flavors or colors, or what have you.

A small boy maybe three years old dressed up in the little white sailor suit his aunt had given him for his most recent birthday and that he doesn’t care about either way; that boy pointed at the rampaging dragon, and he said, “look, Mommy, look!”

But his mother was reading a woman’s magazine about how to trick your family into eating vegetables, how to keep your eyebrows looking beautiful even into your late 40s, and what blouses are likely to go best with what shorts, slacks, and skirts this season; and she didn’t hear him. Well, she heard him, but his cries didn’t register with her, and she kept reading about how best to be a woman in this modern world where God lives mostly in churches and evil exists only in works of fiction like you see on TV or read in a book or hear about from your gossipy neighbor who loves to exaggerate, bless her little heart.

And then I don’t remember. Because surely the dragon, angered for sure but probably for no good reason, collided with the picnickers, and surely that was an explosive, a consequential contact. But I don’t recall. No, I really don’t.