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June 13, 2006

At some point on Saturday evening, Elijah and I determined that we should construct a dinosaur museum in the bedroom hallway. He went about gathering exhibits. These included: his dinosaurs from the bathtub, the remote-control T-Rex that his auntie gave him for his last birthday, a couple of appropriate volumes from his vast collection of etymological tomes, and a stuffed Triceratops puppet. While he did this, I vacuumed the cat shit out of the hallway.

According to Elijah, the museum should consist of all the collected items tossed into one big pile, which could then, apparently, be totally manhandled by visitors. When I asked him why, he told me we were in the process of "making a dinosaur movie." I imagine there are people pitching in Hollywood at this very moment who have worse ideas.

It came time to name the museum.

"Esther Mason," he said.

"Who's Esther Mason?" I said.

"Esther Mason is something that I like," he said threatingly, like I was preparing to steal the joy of Esther Mason from him.

"Yeah, but who is it?"

"Esther Mason is a giant monster with blood on the outside. He has two noses and likes to eat alligator poop."

This wasn't the answer I'd expected, having imagined an upper-class arts and sciences patron in her mid-70s, but I went with it.

"Esther Mason is a he?"

"He's a boy."

"OK, then," I said, and wrote on his Magna Doodle:

WELCOME TO THE ESTHER MASON DINOSAUR MUSEUM.

Elijah informed me that we'd be charging $40 to adults and $20 for kids. I thought those sounded like excellent prices. Thus, The Esther Mason Dinosaur Museum is now accepting visitors. You all should come. It's like Disneyland, except with much lower overhead and much better food. And not in Anaheim.

Posted by at 3:08 PM | Permalink

Comments

To increase your marketability, you may want to change that to "The Anaheim Esther Mason Dinosaur Museum of Los Angeles."

Posted by: Ian | June 13, 2006 6:06 PM

Der..Make that "Mrs. Torrance". Doh. It's been a while.

Posted by: Mieke | June 14, 2006 12:28 AM

A google search of Esther Mason turns up an interesting account of a trial from 1799 in which Esther Mason was tried "for feloniously stealing, on the 9th of July, a white muslin tambour cloak, value 2l. an India Bengal table-cloth, value 2l. three printed cotton gowns, value 2l. a gold fillagree worked timble, value 3l. a gold ring, value 10s. and a blue cloth spencer, value 16s"

Posted by: Kerry | June 14, 2006 9:14 AM

I love what kids do with language. My son recently turned 4. The other day he was outside with his friend from next door and they began riffing on the fact that the friend's mother was old. "I'm an old woman," the friend announced. "I'm a new woman," my son said. I'm just so proud.

Posted by: dave | June 14, 2006 12:51 PM

Nice prices. How much are annual memberships?

Posted by: John E. | June 14, 2006 2:43 PM

Yo, John. You've got to stop making your comments look so much like spam. I almost deleted that one....Annual memberships, based on the prices, probably run into the hundreds of dollars. But we have special family benefits, like sleepovers and visits to Mashti Malone's Iranian ice cream.

Posted by: Neal Pollack | June 14, 2006 2:54 PM

$40? Each? For $40 I would expect the young proprietor to refer to me as Uncle (or “Unka”) Tim for the entire visit. My wife he should call “lady”, because that’d be hilarious. That and a key fob is what I'd expect, nay, demand for $40.

Posted by: Tim | June 14, 2006 3:36 PM

You can all keep your theories. All's I know is, if there's an Esther Mason in Elijah's class, I'd check him or her for teeth marks ...

Posted by: troy | June 15, 2006 12:53 PM

Maybe it has something to do with Madonna's new tour?

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