MTG: Hey you. I wanna ask you something, call me when you get this okay?
I call back while at work.
Me: Hey what's up?
MTG: Hey I wanted to know if you want to go to the Body Works show after work? It's Tuesday so the museum admission is free, we just have to pay for the Body Works exhibit.
Me: Oh yeah!! I've been wanting to see that.
MTG: Okay, I'm getting off early so just pick me up at home. A couple of my friends are going to meet us there.
Me: Okay.
I've been waiting to see the Body Works exhibit since it opened here last week. Perhaps you've seen it. Looks something like this:
Yep it's that exhibit with the dead cadavers. Unfortunately the specimen above was not in this show. That's in the Body World's show, we got the Body Works show, which isn't nearly as big but awesome none the less.
I haven't been to our local museum in ages. The Witte Museum hasn't changed much since I was a kid, but they do get really good exhibits. The parking lot was full so we had to park across the street in the back lot behind I-Hop. We hurried across the street that is full of busy traffic and meet up with MTG's friends.
Going inside there were lots of people but no real line, which was good. We quickly bought our passes, I got an audio tour for me and MTG to share. The exhibit was dark and eerie at first. The first room you enter was almost pitch black, asides from the monitors telling about the human anatomy. Once you round the corner you're confronted face to face with a man sans skin, running towards you with his muscles fixed in various positions.
MTG quickly grabbed my hand the moment we turned the corner.
Me: Your squeezing kind of hard. (The blood in my hand quickly disappearing as MTG held tight)
MTG: Sorry, I didn't think it'd be quite so real. (She didn't lighten her grip)
We stared in awe at the body for a few minutes and made our was around the room looking at the various body parts. Legs, arms, bones, joints, ears, everything, from real people.
There were plenty of kids there with their parents, most of them well behaved, but you could tell the few that were way too scared to be there.
We took in the circulatory system, the muscles, organs. People split in half, quarters of people, a brain sliced in sections, an arm skinned to the shoulder with the muscles attached. Every organ there. MTG never loosening her grip on my hand. She was excited but scarred.
A few rounds we ended in the reproductive area. Most interesting. It's funny the audio tour of this is very thorough. The part on the man took like 1 minute and 30 secs. The part on the women took like 7 minutes. I actually turned it off cause it was taking too long. One can only hear about the menstrual cycle for so long while looking at a torso of a woman that's been sliced in half. We got in line for the blocked off Prenatal part of the exhibit. MTG jabbering away, while we waited.
We entered the exhibit and she got really quiet. We read the descriptions on the walls, and looked at the babies. From a few weeks, to 32 weeks. The first baby being smaller than my thumb. But it was there, you could see it's arms and legs, the bones barely there but you could see them. The nails it had nails, really it did. Then more babies as it grew and got larger. MTG squeezed my hand even tighter the whole time not saying a word. There were also babies that died of congenital defects and sudden death syndrome. A few kids rushed past us playing around. We stood there reading the information and examining the specimens. Finally MTG pulled me along and out of that part of the exhibit without saying a word.
MTG: I'm sorry I got all quiet in there. I just didn't realize all that, especially with my test, last week.
Me: There's nothing to apologize about. I never really gave much thought about the whole development or anything till now. I mean you see it in school but that's not the same. Its'...its' something else.
MTG: Yeah.
We stood there staring into the eyes of a woman who was skinned and her muscles and vital organ's showing. Her arms where outstretched as if she was raising them to the sun an smiling. We continued the tour, MTG getting more chatty as we got further along. We had totally lost tract of her friends by the time we finished, and ended up walking back to through the exhibit, only to find that they were already waiting for us outside in the main museum.
We perused around the gift shop, I bought a replica Velociraptor skull, that would look cool on the bookshelf at home. MTG bought a DaVinci shirt. We sat on the bench at the entrance while MTG's friends went to the restroom. MTG putting her head on my shoulder. She still hadn't really let go of my hand. Just as her friends were walking towards us the fire deparment/EMS came through the door. Apparently someone had passed out in the Body Works exhibit. One of the members of the group that was with the person who passed out was telling the EMS techs about the person while on his mobile, yelling a message into it, "Call me when you get this!!"
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