036. Martin Todd, you are not Godzilla

"Don't you think you're a little old for the dinosaur suit?" Dr Prentice was asking.

He had a point. Martin Todd was about three decades too old for a dinosaur suit – so old, in fact, that he'd had to commission a lady he'd found on the internet to custom make a costume big enough to cover his enormous girth.

It had all started when a package arrived from his primary school. Some workmen were excavating the playground to build a new drama theatre when they had unearthed a time capsule he and his classmates had buried there. The new principal had enclosed a letter from his 7-year-old self, and reminded Mr Todd that if he enjoyed the flash-back he was most welcome to make an alumni donation.

Dear future Martin Todd, the letter read, in earnest cursive. I bet your life is sooooo cool. I hope your a cirkus trainer and that you get to ride the lions for fun, and that your married to someone really pretty like Annie from my class. Also, in the future you will have your own hovvercar and drive around singing and waring sunglasses. Hope its orsome.
Love, Martin Todd.
p.s. Also in the future do you get to be a dinosaw sometimes? I hope so. I cant wait.

The letter had arrived on a Tuesday, which was also the day Martin Todd's department accounts were due. Sitting in his cubicle, wading through a pile of paperwork he could barely see over, he'd felt the rest of his life stretch before him in a haze of unmarked days. He decided something had to change.

So he began to sneak the dinosaur suit to work with him on Fridays. At first, he would creep into the toilets in his lunchbreak and change into it. He didn't go anywhere – he was worried people would stare at him – but when he locked himself in a cubicle and read the paper, he smiled for the first time in March.

When he got a bit braver, he wore it on his sandwich run. Then, he wore it to the bank. Today he'd even worn it to his standing appointment with his shrink, a decision Dr Prentice was having trouble understanding.

The suit didn't change anything, of course. When he took it off, there was still a pile of emails in his inbox and a dearth of food in his fridge. Kelly wasn't any closer to taking him back and the rusted-out Corolla was still leaking oil onto his garage floor. His life still sucked.

But when he put on the suit –

Well, for one hour every week, he was living the dream.