Rachel the Hipster Child

When I was a child, I had two favorites in almost every category: my real favorite, and the favorite I told other people about. The latter was typically related to the former, but chosen for being unknown. I really just wanted people to think I was smart.

For example, my favorite Greek goddess was Athena. Her symbol is an owl, she was supposed to be pretty tall, she sprang fully formed from Zeus's forehead, and she was paradoxically the goddess of both war and wisdom. So that was pretty cool. My "favorite" goddess was Hestia, goddess of the hearth and of architecture. Nobody has ever heard of her, including spell check. I told people I liked her because architecture is cool, but really I just liked that nobody else knew who she was.

Speaking of myths, I really liked Greek myths. I told people I really liked Norse myths, and went so far as to check out books of Norse mythology from the library to perpetuate my image. Norse myths are pretty messed up, even in the realm of mythology. The gods are always dying (which is more or less permanent; time does weird things in the myths).

My favorite animal was the bottlenose dolphin, for pretty obvious reasons (I was a little girl, they swim around, they're pretty intelligent, and they jump out of the water when ships sail past them). I alternated between telling people I liked vaquitas and telling them I liked botos. Both of these are similar to dolphins, but have the added benefit of being obscure.

To be fair, botos are pretty awesome. And pink.

My favorite dinosaur was the stegosaurus. Spikes and plates, instantly recognizable, and clearly cool. My "favorite" was the protoceratops, which is similar to a triceratops but without horns. Actually I did quite like that one for its own merits, mostly because it's pretty cute. Also, how cool would it be to have a pet protoceratops? They're about the size of a (very) large dog, so they'd be way less intimidating than an enormous dinosaur. Plus it turns out their skulls are the probably inspiration for the griffin myth, so I'm going to go ahead and say in this case I chose well. Then again, can you really go wrong with any dinosaur?