The devil is in the details

Kiddos

DISCLAIMER: I really like children. They are all cute and cuddly and stuff. Being around them gives me an opportunity to act like a little kid. In 400 years when I am a responsible adult, I would like to have a couple. So really, don't take this as me hating children, because I don't. I like them a lot, even when I want to kick their parents.

E. and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts today. (after a spectacular phone conversation with M., where we decided that we were mean and evil. Go us.) I have never seen the MFA so crowded. Actually, it was crowded with people who had brought their young children along (I would gauge the ages of these children as being from 0-10, with the majority being 5-8.) I understand and applaud the idea of exposing children to art and other cultures at a young age, but this was ridiculous. In the first gallery that we went in (where the Egyptian sarcophagi (sp?) reside) it was particularly bad. The only thing that you could hear in the gallery was the sound of children talking and the sound of a baby crying (screaming. She was screaming.) It was so loud that I couldn't really think, which was not the atmosphere that I expect the museum was going for. At one point I was looking at a statue next to the screaming baby, who was there with her mother and her big brother (age 5?) He was much more interested in the zipper of his coat than anything that his mom was trying to get him to look at. What possessed this woman to drag him there? What possessed her to keep him there when he wasn't interested (likely because he was so young), when her baby was crying (and it is questionable whether she should have brought the baby), and when she seemed to be having a bad time dragging around a little boy and a stroller and getting in everyone's way? I just don't understand it.

The mother of the screaming baby wasn't the worst offender, either. There was another woman who was with two little girls, approximately 6 and 8. The three of them were following what I guess was a family-oriented museum tour, where there is a book to follow and activities to do, etc. Issue #1? When we entered the gallery, the two little girls were laying in the doorway coloring some page in their activity book, getting in lots of people's way. Why, exactly, would this woman think that it was okay for her daughters to just lay there in the middle of the floor? I was baffled. A while later though, I was walking by another entrance to the same gallery and saw the family again. The girls were sitting on the floor with another activity, and I overheard the following conversation:
Mom: No, no, honey, you aren't supposed to be drawing a picture of that statue. You are supposed to be doing activity X.
8-ish year old girl: But I like the statue. I want to draw a picture of it.
Mom: No, you're supposed to be using that page for some other drawing. Don't draw that.

I left before I could throttle her. I'm really unclear on how she was encouraging her daughters to appreciate art by sticking to an activity book and not letting them actually appreciate anything.

I had a good time the rest of the time that I was at the Museum, as I always do (I'll leave out the other editorial comments I could make and just note that I loved theGreek/Roman/Egyptian stuff, the Pollacks, the modern sculpture, and the impressionists as usual.) The whole experience emphasized my annoyance at the parents of small children, who feel the need to bring their kids places and subject me to them. It happens at the mall, and at the movie theater, and the aquarium, and restaurants, and now apparently the museum too. I understand that parenting is hard and you want to be with your kids and babysitters are expensive...but why does everyone else lose their right to have a peaceful afternoon just because you had a kid? Did no one tell you that having children meant having to sacrifice always being able to do whatever you want? I say this about other things (I'll censor myself here because of knowledge of my readers) and now I'll say it about parenting...Do you have to have part of your brain removed to have a baby?

posted by Immunegirl @ 5:54 PM