Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Umm, what was that?

We are officially in "school-tour season" here at the museum and I have some funnies to share with you. Now, I know that for all my intrepid blog readers, if you ever had the joy to work at a living history museum or are currently working there, you have far better one-liners than I do, but please remember that I don't have: fires, flies, chickens, or horse doo in the street to spur on some of the best visitor comments.

So here are my school tour comments, 2008:

Why do you have so much old stuff here?

You have nice teeth. I like them. (directed towards me from a middle school girl)

So which one is older, WWII or the war of 1812?

It smells like old stuff in here.

Is that a real man in the mine shaft? (it's clearly a mannequin)

I don't want to look at this junk, I want to go to the gift shop.


And my all time favorite which happened a few months after I started here:

This town is so old, it doesn't even have a Starbucks. (from a cranky 15ish year-old)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My favorite line from this year's school tours wasn't even said to me. In the barn with the babies we have a couple of little bull calves. Both of them are dairy cattle. Someone asked a group of kids what they are called (trying to get them to say calves) and one of the kids told her they are called veal. Technically true, but completely unexpected!

Alaina said...

Too funny. I'm working at the Eagle tomorrow - first time this season and first re-intro to schoo tours. :)

Jenna said...

I like the Starbucks line (and the teeth compliment was very nice)!

Jamie said...

I personally enjoy the irony in the comment about junk and the gift shop. Hope all is well with you Mer!

Anonymous said...

I LOVE those! Kids are so funny.

Our topic this year is about children in our historic house. We had a drawing of a stork carrying a baby in our opening exhibit panel, and one little girl looked at the illustration and said, "is that real?"

Ok, my job is not to explain the birds and the bees to 3rd graders... so as the other adults looked uncomfortably on and stared at me thinking "what do you you say to that?" I managed to say, "well, it's a real drawing..." She seemed satisfied.