Daddy: Be careful you don't walk into something like the coffee table.
Izzy: "It's easy to know where you're going."
Daddy:(Tongue firmly in cheek) "Especially if you know where you've been!"
Izzy: I've been in the living room."
Daddy:"..."
Mrs. Narrator was gone for the weekend and it was the first P.D. day of the school year. (Cripes it wasn't even a week past Halloween) We were all sick of the usual P.D. day activities of sitting around whining about how bored we all were and so we decided to do something about it. We went to the Museum.
"We're going to go to the museum, they have an exhibition of Titanic artifacts let's go see them."
The boy thought it sounded like a great idea. He had an inkling of what the Titanic disaster was and it would get him out of homework for the day and so was all for it. Izzy seemed a little confused, excited but not sure how excited to be.
"Do you know what the Titanic was?" I asked Isobel
"It was a great big dinosaur, Titanic- saurus -rex." she said matter of factly.
"Good guess bur not quite. The Titanic was a great big ship that sank a long time ago and has been on the bottom of the ocean and they have brought up things from the ship, stuff that belonged to the people that were on the ship when it sunk."
"What happened to the people on the boat?" Izzy asked.
"Some of them survived but a whole lot of them died." I tried to explain gently.
"Coooool," they both said.
When we got to he museum and paid our admission, we ventured up the stairs and were magically taken back to the maiden voyage of the Titanic. OK so really the upper level of the museum was made up to look like a gang plank and rope lines and Izzy kept asking why anyone would want to walk on boards when they could just get on the ship. The attendant handed us our boarding passes and explained that the names on them were the names of real people who had been on the Titanic and at the end of the exhibit, we could find out whether or not they had lived or died. The kids also thought this was cooool.
"BEEEEEEEEEEP. Do you hear that?" The attendant asked as she was stamping the last of our boarding passes. "That is the sound of someone touching one of the displays. I can see that you have young children with you but we ask that you kindly do not touch the exhibits." I assured her that my children were very well behaved and would not intentionally touch anything.
"Daddy," Izzy cried out. "Look at the size of that (BEEEEEEEP) toilet seat!"
"Honey you have to be careful not to touch any of the stuff or that alarm is going to go off the whole time we are here, OK? And that's not a big toilet seat, it's a porthole."
"OK," she said. "I'll be careful. Oh my god, Daddy. Look at that!" (BEEEEEEEP) We walked on to see the first class cabins.
"Is that where people slept?" The Boy asked.
"Yes, the very rich people." I said
"What is this rope here for?"(BEEEEEEP) Izzy asked.
I was starting to think that we were going to be asked to leave or that the attendants would single out Isobel and give her hell for touching everything she shouldn't. I have to say that for every sensor she set off, there was at least two other kids around her that were setting them off too. She is good.
As we neared the end of the end of the exhibit, there was a large piece of ice that you were allowed to touch and a sign that said the ice the Titanic hit would have been many times colder than the piece of ice here. I told Izzy what the sign said and expla
ined how cold it would have been."Oh god," she said. "I'm never going on this boat again. It's cold and rotten."
The list of passengers let us know that we had all survived and went on to prosperous if not happy lives. Just before the sign was a case full of perfectly preserved tureens that had been on the bottom of the ocean for 98 years.
"Daddy look, mac and cheese dishes." (BEEEEEP)
Izzy and I took a little road trip today and ended up in a mall we had never been to before. Normally I wouldn't write about this kind of thing but as Izzy sat on The merry- go- round, that cost a fortune to operate and so remained immobile, we both noticed a big red button that said stop.
"Push it Daddy." she said, thinking it might make the ride somehow come to life. It came to life alright. The music that began to emanate from the wretched horses
sounded like John Carpenter might put it in the next Halloween movie."What kind of music is this?" Izzy asked.
"Kinda creepy, huh?"
"Yeah." she said.
She got off the ride and we wandered around the mall and talked about how spooky the ride was and how scary the music sounded. We slapped our feet on the tile as we walked and when we decided we had had enough, Izzy said it was time to head for home. On the way out we passed by the creepy carousel again. She looked at me and I looked back and we moved silently to it. She got on and I pushed the stop button and we both giggled in a creepy kind of way...at least she comes by it honestly...
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