Finally, we were the first caller to Know-The-Show with Dave and Nina and we were so excited to have won tickets to Bodies The Exhibition! We called The Dad and asked him to go pick up our tickets. Then we planned our Sunday at The Bodies. The biggest quandary we faced was should we eat beforehand and run the risk of making ourselves sick while looking at the muscle-exposed cadavers OR should we eat afterwards and run the risk of having no appetite at all? We opted to eat before, none of us are really pukers anyway.
After lunch, we raced to the exhibit and before we even got inside, Daughter 2 was grossed out by the pictures on the outside of the building. She announced that she was NOT going in. She'd be staying right outside NOT looking at the gross bodies. We told her that was fine, just try to not let any strangers take her and we threw in a "don't stare too long at the pictures" and she decided she'd go in with us after all.
As we went in, the nice man with the camera around his neck asked me to check the camera around my neck as there's no photography allowed. Except by him, of course, as he positioned us in front of a green wall and took our picture. Daughter 2 asked, "Is this so they can find us in case we get lost with the bodies?" She was more than a little freaked.
And freaked or not, we entered the first room. This room became known as "The Penis Room". Inside this room, we saw the basic muscle and skeletal structure. We saw the spine up close and personal. We even saw the nerves that extend from the spine and go out into the entire body! We saw the brain. We saw tumors from the brain. We saw the muscular make up of a foot for heaven's sake! The Daughters? They saw that the whole-body displays were of men. With penises.
The next room was filled with artery structures. Apparently, the designers (or whatever you might call the people who created these displays) filled the arteries and veins with a plastic colored stuff and then removed the rest of the body from around the arteries. They were nothing short of beautiful. The Daughters? They saw pretty colorful designs in the room next to the penises.
Throughout the entire exhibit, we related everything back to the penises. "Look at the baby's penis!" "Look at the smoker's penis!" "Look, there's the basketball player's penis!" "Daddy! There sure are a lot of penises!" The Dad, on the other hand, stayed as far away from us as possible, except when he came and told me that as an official manhood act, he felt compelled to place post-its next to all the displays explaining that "Death causes significant shrinkage".
When we were almost done the little scientist-looking worker approached The Daughters and offered to let them hold a brain. Then a heart. Then a kidney. Then a lung. Daughter 1 - the cerebral smarty-pants held them all and examined them all. Daughter 2, stepped back and declared that she would not hold any of them. And if he brought out a penis, she would "blow chunks all over the floor." Her words - not mine.
We reached the gift shop where the man with the camera was now at the computer. He pulled up our picture whose green back ground had been replaced with a black and grey x-ray-ish skeletal background and there was now a football-playing cadaver standing to the right of The Dad. I had a green sweater on, so I - standing to the left of The Dad - have been reduced to a floating head by the photo software. We had to purchase the picture!! What a great way to remember our time with the penises - I mean bodies!
As we walked out the door, I shared the photo with The Daughters. Daughter 2 quickly announced, "Momma! They cut something off!"
"I know, honey! Isn't it funny? They cut off my body!"
"No," she quickly protested, "They cut off the football player's penis!"
It's good to expose children to science early on, right??
