Un-Natural History Museum
Feb. 13th, 2007 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseSo, Mason and I went to visit the Bell Museum of Natural History today on one of the “Passport to Play” cards from our local library. If you’ve never been to the Bell Museum, let me describe it for you: it’s like something out of a horror novel. Rooms and rooms of dead, stuffed animals staring at you with snarling teeth and glass eyes.
Mason enjoyed it, though he found the dead animals confusing. Having seen most of them alive in various zoos we frequent he was unclear as to their status. “Are they real, ima?” he kept asking me. “Yes,” I had to explain, “They’re real. They’re just… dead.” I didn’t have the stamina to explain “stuffed.”
Luckily, the Bell Museum also has a section especially for kids. Their hands-on area excited Mason a lot more. He got to touch real, live versions of our perennial favorite arthropod, the cockroach, and a snake – though which exact kind I can no longer remember. He passed on touching the salamander, however. Plus, Mason got to put his foot inside the impression of a footprint of a dinosaur. That experience well and truly rocked his world.
Then, we went out for Chinese buffet because Mason has been harassing me to find a restaurant that will serve him octopus. Seriously. The U Gardens did not have octopus on the menu, though it did have squid. I showed him the word (which he can read) and told him there would probably be squid in the buffet, too, which, of course, was a big, fat lie. I convinced him, however, that the pork balls were actually octopus balls, which made him so happy he was nearly giddy. I only feel a tiny bit bad about my fib. Ordering squid off the menu would have been an expensive waste, as mostly Mason just wanted to hold up the “octopus” balls and wave them at me threateningly and make barfing noises ala the Garfield comic strip that got him hot on this idea in the first place.
Can I just say that as a parent, I fucking HATE Garfield? Not only is he a piss-poor role model, the jokes are just plain stupid. And, yet… somehow Jim Davis has made some kind of pact with Satan many children seem completely enamored of that fat, lazy cat. Mason also loves Calvin and Hobbes (also piss-poor role models), but I can stand to read those comics over and over because most of them are still dead witty, even at the five millionth re-reading.
So that was my day. You?
Mason enjoyed it, though he found the dead animals confusing. Having seen most of them alive in various zoos we frequent he was unclear as to their status. “Are they real, ima?” he kept asking me. “Yes,” I had to explain, “They’re real. They’re just… dead.” I didn’t have the stamina to explain “stuffed.”
Luckily, the Bell Museum also has a section especially for kids. Their hands-on area excited Mason a lot more. He got to touch real, live versions of our perennial favorite arthropod, the cockroach, and a snake – though which exact kind I can no longer remember. He passed on touching the salamander, however. Plus, Mason got to put his foot inside the impression of a footprint of a dinosaur. That experience well and truly rocked his world.
Then, we went out for Chinese buffet because Mason has been harassing me to find a restaurant that will serve him octopus. Seriously. The U Gardens did not have octopus on the menu, though it did have squid. I showed him the word (which he can read) and told him there would probably be squid in the buffet, too, which, of course, was a big, fat lie. I convinced him, however, that the pork balls were actually octopus balls, which made him so happy he was nearly giddy. I only feel a tiny bit bad about my fib. Ordering squid off the menu would have been an expensive waste, as mostly Mason just wanted to hold up the “octopus” balls and wave them at me threateningly and make barfing noises ala the Garfield comic strip that got him hot on this idea in the first place.
Can I just say that as a parent, I fucking HATE Garfield? Not only is he a piss-poor role model, the jokes are just plain stupid. And, yet… somehow Jim Davis has made some kind of pact with Satan many children seem completely enamored of that fat, lazy cat. Mason also loves Calvin and Hobbes (also piss-poor role models), but I can stand to read those comics over and over because most of them are still dead witty, even at the five millionth re-reading.
So that was my day. You?
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-13 09:50 pm (UTC)Garfield sucks. Ed had thought for years that it was just that it wasn't as good as it used to be, until Molly discovered his stash of early Garfield books and hauled them out and made him read them to her (over and over and over, of course) and he realized that no, it is exactly as funny now as it was in 1980. None of the jokes were funny the first time, either.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 07:30 pm (UTC)Ah, the Garfield Mystique
Date: 2007-02-14 01:22 am (UTC)But, when I was 10, they had a Garfield cartoon on TV. And an animated Garfield short movie. The hooks, they be in DEEP.
-Mel
Re: Ah, the Garfield Mystique
Date: 2007-02-14 07:11 am (UTC)The teenager thought that Garfield might be one of the best comics ever. (He likes to make lists.) I disagreed. He thought that Bloom County must not be any good because he hadn't heard of it. Oy!
Moral of these stories: There's no accounting for tastes, and fortunately we often grow out of them.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-14 01:36 am (UTC)Anyway, um, I don't think there's a point to this comment.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 08:44 pm (UTC)much love, miss you guys!
-Allie