My grandparents lived across the street from the Museum of Natural History and my brother, sister, and I visited them almost every weekend. They weren’t the kind of grandparents to get down on the floor and play with children so when they wanted to get us out of the apartment they took us across the street. It got so the museum was like an extension of their place–over-heated and boring. That’s what I remember of it, anyhow. We had to be well-behaved. Man, it was tedious.
I stayed away from the museum for years and it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I went back. And I realized it was a great, mysterious place. I especially loved the scenes like the one pictured above and recognized then how big an impression they’d made on me as a kid.
[Photo Credit: Joel Zimmer]
I love the place. Remember going with my mom and meeting my Manhattan sis there as a kid. School trips, too. Dug the life-size whale.
As a teen it was the star show and Laseriumm at the Hayden planetarium, first with my sis and later when I was older with my buds on drugs.
Always have the Holden Caulfied visit in my mind when I go there.
Took my daughter for the first time about 5-6 years back. Night At The Museum had just been out in Japan so we had to see the Moai statues. Asked the guard and he didn't know what I was talking about so I had to say the line from the movie, "Dumb dumb, you give me gum gum." Sadly, he suddenly knew exactly what we wanted.