Kid on Display

Three months ago, I experienced one of the more harrowing events of my career as a mother. So traumatizing that I am just now able to write about it. It all started with deal on a membership to the American Museum of Natural History. So one day, I decided to go to the museum to see the dinosaurs with my two kids, a couple of friends and their kids.

It all started off pretty well...

Watching a movie.

Posing with the mammoths (I think?)

I took my eyes off him for the briefest moment in an area of the museum where I thought he was corralled by walls/glass on three sides and strollers blocking his exit. Suddenly Corinne exclaimed, "Look at what your kid is doing!"  And this is what I saw*:

Lucas. On the WRONG side of 8-foot-high protective glass surrounding an exhibit. NOTHING separating him from priceless millions-of-years-old fossils. And I couldn't figure out how he got in there.

Surely there must have been a gate that was unlocked or a gap in the glass. He couldn't have gone underneath - the glass cleared the floor by only 4 or 5 inches.

Then Lucas began to TOUCH things: labels, boxes where the bones were displayed, a rod holding up the skull of a giant prehistoric sloth...which he thankfully didn't move.

Finally, Jacob (his 3-year-old friend) confirmed that Lucas had, in fact, slid under the glass. So I beckoned him over to me, grabbed his ankles, and yanked. Slightly panicked, I almost ripped the poor child's ear off as I maneuvered his head under the glass.

And thankfully, the sloths aren't under as much security surveillance as the more interesting dinosaur bones, so no alarms went off, no security guards approached, and my new museum membership was not stripped from me. Since then, I've only been brave enough to go back to the museum when Daniel is there to play man-to-man defense with me.

* Film credits go to amazing Corinne. Photo courtesy of Annalisa.