A brief history of my history with history museums

My history with history museums starts with this guy:

My dad bought this figurine for me when I was six years old.  I picked it out from all of the other glass animals in the small little gift shop that is still on the ground floor of the Field Museum several hours before it opened to other patrons after one of the best nights of my life.

My family had always been a museum-going one, and my parents made it a point to take my sister and I to a big museum every time we were in the city.  So I was primed and ready when my dad told us that we--along with a hundred or so other folks--were going to spend the night at the Field Museum.  It was a part of a program called "Dozin' with the Dinos," where parents and children come in to the museum after it closes with sleeping bags and pajamas and do crafts, take tours, and explore the museum late into the night.  Basically it is a little kid's dream come true.

It was almost twenty-five years ago, so a lot of the details a blurry.  I remember going to orientation in the big theater and having a security guard tell me that I wasn't allowed to touch the bronze statue I was touching.  But more than just yelling at me, she took a moment to explain that the reason I couldn't was because the oils on my little hands would damage the metal.  I haven't touched a statue since, scout's honor.  I remember trying to pick the very best spot to lay out my threadbare green sleeping bag, and ending up next to this guy:

At that time the Pawnee Earth Lodge was still in this hall, but it's otherwise unchanged. One of my favorite things when I worked at the Field was when an errand would take me through this hall and I could walk past the same spot I'd set up my sleeping bag so many years ago.  My family set up with a few other families we knew and a bunch of other people we didn't, and then set out to explore the museum.

Looking at the program now, we must have had some workshops, there was dinner and a midnight snack at some point, and we probably made some crafts, but I don't remember any of that.  What I remember was that some time around midnight (an inconceivable time to my tiny mind) they turned off the lights and told us any further exploring would have to be done by flashlight.  My dad armed Sister and I with flashlights and we set off to go through Ancient Egypt.

I don't think I will ever be closer to the feeling a scientist on the verge of a discovery has than I did that night.  It didn't matter that we'd been through that exhibit dozens of times in the well-lit day--every artifact was newly-discovered in the wavering beam of my flashlight.  It was the most terrifying and exhilarating night of my life to that point, and while the details have faded over the years, that thrill of discovery and excitement lingers.  And I've been lost to history museums ever since.

The next morning Dad let me pick out a figurine, and I've kept that little leopard with me ever since.  Every time I look at it on my desk I'm reminded of that night, and it makes me excited to try to bring that same feeling to other little kids.  And while I'm sure that art museums and science centers bring the same joy to others, for me it's always going to be the history museums.  They've been blowing my mind for as long as I can remember.  Seriously: dinosaurs.  mummies.  life-sized adobe pueblos and honest-to-goodness meteorites. lions and tigers and bears and little glass leopards. Oh, my indeed.