Musings of a Museum Docent

I have the wonderful job of working at a History museum. I absolutely adore my job and when needed, I perform tours of the outside historic buildings at the museum. I get to interact with wonderful people not only from around the country, but from around the globe. We recently even had a real-life Bavarian prince and princess come through our doors! So, from day-to-day I never know what to expect. Like one day, I gave a tour to a view sweet couple from North Carolina. All was well until we headed outside. The nice gentleman then proceeds to pull out a pair of Speedo swimming goggles. And yes, he put them on. And wore them the entire duration of our 40 minute tour. The purpose of said goggles was to keep the pollen out of his eyes. So it took all I could do to talk to this guy without laughing. The goggles just enlarged his eyes and that was all I could focus on! It was the weirdest tour I ever gave.

My most recent funny story happened just this past week. We had a "Forever Young" group from a church come in to tour the museum. There were about 20 in the group so me and our curator split them up. I take my group outside and everything is going just fine. We leave one building and start making our way to the next. As we pass the outhouse, I made a joke. I asked if anyone needed a bathroom break. Of course everyone laughs and we move on. I normally use that joke on every tour I give, and it never causes any problems until this day. So, I have my group in our Victorian cottage and I'm talking. I look outside and notice that one of the men from my group is outside wandering around. Then I watch in disbelief as he heads to the outhouse. He goes in and closes the door. I couldn't believe it! I was thinking surely he's not doing what I think he is. The outhouse is a fake. There is no hole dug into the ground to make it a true-blue outhouse. Shortly, the gentleman emerges from the outhouse and rejoins our group. No one at the museum has been brave enough to go check out the situation in the outhouse. Note to self: don't tell the bathroom-break-at-the-outhouse joke anymore!!

I have several more stories similar to some of these that just make you scratch your head. These are just two adventures in the life of a Museum docent!