Writing Project #1

I have always been a strong believer that a child’s greatest adventure is discovering everything that this world has to offer, and as I passed the statues of children playing in marching band and stood before those great doors painted with bright greens and reds and blues, I realized that this place could be one of the greatest discoveries for any adventurous child. “The Children’s Museum,” stated the door very bluntly with a cursive font that curled and twisted to suggest that the mood of this place was much more relaxed than the door of a business with a Times New Roman entrance. The moment I walk in, I’m instantly greeted with the smiling face of a young woman working behind the red, blue, and yellow ticket counter. She seemed very nice and caring but a little bored with just sitting all day. Looking around the towering hall I thought to myself, “Wow! You can’t put a price on how many memories a child could make here!” At that moment the young woman stated shortly, “Six dollars please.” I was wrong, I guess you can put a price on it.

Once you pass the primary colored counter, you are suddenly overwhelmed of all the options and adventures. It almost makes you realize that if an adult can be stunned with the opportunities of this place, imagine how the children would feel. The three story building was packed floor to ceiling with varying opportunities for each of the kids to explore. The children had the option to explore space, fly a hot air balloon, become a newscaster, and live in a tree house all in one day. At the center of the building sits, what I remembered to be one of my favorite attractions; the prairie dog exhibit. Here, the children were able to crawl into a series of tunnels that intertwine together, much like a prairie dog town. Children would eagerly crawl in one side, vanish for a few moments and then suddenly reappear on the complete opposite side of the mound, smiling from ear to ear. As many different children popped their small heads out of holes and imitating Timon from The Lion King, I realized that I wasn’t just seeing the same few smiling faces over and over again, they were each different kids. It’s almost incredible when you realize how many children those tunnels even hold! The children became more and more ecstatic every time they popped their head up and shouted “SURPRISE” to wherever their otherwise occupied parents were sitting. The kids were so excited every time they came up and went back down, as if every time they entered the tunnels again, they thought they would discover a whole new adventure.

After awhile, the difference between the way each parent watched their kid became more interesting. Many of the mothers were sitting together and chatting about the latest thing their child did or whatever the newest drama on the soaps, but one father in particular caught my eye. He was sitting alone staring at his little girl as she sprinted into the tubes like all the other children, almost tripping, and before she disappeared he shouted to her, “Anna, be careful!” but she just waved him off. As he sat down, it seemed that he had given the warning more as a comfort for himself than her. During the time she wound about the tubes, he never took his eyes off of the exit he was expecting her to come out of. After seconds turned into minutes, the father scooted farther forward on his chair. A few minutes longer he seemed like he couldn’t take it anymore and he stood up. Not wanting to be too hovering, he took a lap around the mound. After still not being able to see her, a flash a panic crossed over his concerned face and right as he opened his mouth to call her she popped out the opposite side. “Daddy!” she squeaked, “There are so many tunnels! It’s so cool!” And with a sigh of relief the father grabs her by the hand and says, “It sounds like fun, but let’s see what else there is.” He scooped her up into his arms and tickled her to make ensure that she didn’t vanish into the tubes once more and scare him all over again. As the little girl, Anna, skipped away in her princess Velcro shoes and twirl her already curly hair, she begged her father to take her over to the grocery store section of the museum.

At the Children’s museum the kids have the option to temporarily become almost any profession they wanted, with the exception of pimp and drug dealer of course. The grocery store section draws in a lot of the children’s attention because it’s something that they are familiar with. Every kid loves going to the grocery store with the mom and helping her pick out what to eat for supper and in this module, the children are in control. They shop for whatever groceries they see fit and when their cart is full and they’ve gone through check-out a volunteer kindly takes the cart and puts all the food back in the correct location. On the far side of the tiny store, a small girl in a plaid dress and pigtails cleared every item off of the pretend produce self and packed it into her midget-sized cart. She scooted her way past a young boy who seemed to be comparing two pieces of plastic meat much like he saw his mother do before. The children were so engrossed with the hollow food that they seemed to totally forget that it was all just make-believe. At one point, another little girl dropped a neon yellow banana to the ground and promptly picked it up, handed it to a volunteer, and stated, “This food was on the ground. It’s too dirty to sell now.” The volunteer struggled to stifle her laugh to make sure that she didn’t discourage the small girl’s obviously serious statement and the girl continued on her merry way. As a volunteer scanned the food for the pigtailed girl, she made small talk about the weather and other “grown-up” things. After she bagged her fake food into little plastic bags she pushed the cart about five feet out of the store. Once she was out of the store and back into the walkway, she stopped and turned to volunteer and said, “What do I do with this now?” Then it was back to reality. She wasn’t really a grown-up going grocery shopping for an insane amount of vegetables; she was just a little girl on a big adventure.

A further tour of the giant museum offers a great variety of adventures for the children. Just walking down a single hall, you pass a pizza bakery where a boy stopped making the messy pepperoni pizza to pick his nose, a police car where the small boy was informing the other car that they were going a “bazillion miles per hour,” and a veterinarian where, if that stuffed dog were real, PETA would definitely make sure the little boy lost his veterinary license for what he was doing to it. Each of these tiny rooms offered a new discovery for the children but they saw each of these tiny rooms as just another adventure. It was amazing to me how excited these kids were just for the future. Things that the adults in this world take for granted or even dread doing, are the same exact things that these children dream about. Each of these kids were using their creativity and also their memory to play these grown-up games. They were reenacting all the moves that they saw on TV or that they had watched their parents do before. But another point that this museum offers that is very important to the children is the fact that they are able to be much more independent. Throughout the whole time I was there, there was never a crying face. I did however, see children with the freedom to paint each other’s face instead of letting a grown-up do it, children telling their parents all the dreams they had for when they grow up, and children taking the time from a somewhat hectic world to create their own adventure and to just stop and discover.