Wandering Weird Loo-vres

***The Banters have finally been prompted to bicker-banter again as they move toward their goal of getting enough banters together for a little book. Inspiration sure takes its time striking these days LOL.***

Hey Matthew. You won't believe this!

What wouldn’t I believe?

Well, this just seems so ridiculous. Like, how do people get locked in museums overnight?

Um…they were taking a dump in the washroom when the museum closed?

Oh, aren’t you the clever one? Now, how did you figure that out? That, apparently, is one of the most common reasons. Like, take this homeless man in Britain who needed to use a loo. He wandered into the famous Tate Museum of Art and fell asleep in the cubicle. When he woke up everything was dark and the museum was all locked up. Could you imagine how he felt? I’d be freaking out!

Well, it doesn’t take much to freak you out, Martha. But, for what it’s worth, I remember falling asleep on the toilet on more than one occasion…

That doesn’t surprise me, Matthew. You spend hours in there reading. I always fall asleep when I’m reading. Doesn’t your bum get numb?

No need to be cheeky Martha. Anyway, with the way you always need to go pee, I could see you being locked in a museum after closing hours. 

Shush! But, come to think of it, when I attended a meeting of our writers’ group at TerryBerry Library a little while back, I was busting at closing time. I hit the toilets and wasn’t quite finished when all the lights went out. Talk about panic…especially since it was so dark I couldn’t even see the toilet paper dispenser!

Ah, that’s my Martha. Anyway, what’s with this sudden interest in museums? In all the years we’ve been married, you’ve never shown much interest in museums. 

That’s because I’m not interested in the kind of museums that you’re interested in, like airplane or technological museums. And while I appreciate art, I don’t understand any of it unless it’s obvious, and so much of it isn’t obvious to me, especially the more modern stuff that just looks like a kid threw paint at a canvas! But that said, I do have another reason for not being particularly interested in museums.

And that is? 

Ok. Tell me this: what’s the scariest movie that you remember seeing when you were young?

Easy. “Creature of the Black Lagoon” when I was about 8. And then, ten years later, that shower scene in “Psycho” really got me. Why do you ask?

Because for me, when I was barely 7 in 1953, it was “The House of Wax”. Do you remember that one with Vincent Price? It was considered so scary they weren’t letting children go see the movie. But my mom and dad wanted to see it so they took me along and my father argued with the people at the door saying that I was with them and he was my father, and it was his decision what his daughter could see or not see. Dad was a pretty scary man when he wanted his way. So they let us in.

So what’s the connection between that and your sudden interest in museums?

Hang on. I’m getting there. So while we were watching the “House of Wax”, my father kept asking if I was okay. I’d nod, indicating I was just fine, but inwardly, I was petrified. I mean, who wouldn’t be terrified at the thought of someone dropping you into hot, boiling wax while you’re still alive just so that person could end up with truly lifelike models for a wax museum?

Gory, all right.

Yes, it was gory and for weeks later, once all the lights were off in our house, I couldn’t get to sleep because I kept seeing someone climbing through my bedroom window. I’d put the pillow over my head, then peek out a few minutes later to see if someone was still there. I’d also wake up halfway through the night and immediately look at the window. I guess that’s why the insistence on not letting kids see the movie. It was similar to the warnings issued years later for “The Exorcist”. 

And this is why you’ve never been interested in museums? 

Well, not entirely. You see, despite “House of Wax”, I do have a morbid fascination with wax museums, though I’d probably die if I ever got locked inside one after dark. But just this week, something prompted me to look into the most unusual museums, and I couldn’t believe some of the weird ones you can visit worldwide.

Like?

Like, there’s one in Beijing that’s devoted to taps…yep, you heard me correctly…and another located in the Leeds Castle in England that attracts over half a million dog lovers annually. It has a display of puppy attire with over 100 unique items dating back centuries. So would you visit either of those?

I must confess neither would interest me. Did your search reveal any museums more exciting than those two?

Oh, for sure. Not that I’d be interested in seeing this other one in England, but the Brits have a lawnmower museum that houses a working lawnmower that is less than 5 centimeters high, along with the first solar-powered robot grass chopper. Seems odd to me that something powered by solar would already be a museum piece, but what do I know?

Ah, time’s just getting away from both of us love. What others might we like to visit if we could?

Well, there’s a potter’s cave museum in Turkey where the walls under the potter’s studio are covered with hair from over 16,000 women!

That sounds as creepy as your house of wax. No thanks!

Then there’s the Bread Museum in Germany, and the Celebrity Hall of Fame in Hollywood which immortalizes items of women’s clothing like push-up bras and thongs and even women’s undies worn by men in drag! And there’s the Museum of Bad Art in Dedham, Massachusetts that is…get this…located in a basement next to the toilets! 

How convenient. I wonder if there’s a museum of Bad Books where publishers send the rejected manuscripts. One is bound to fall asleep on or off the toilet there. Anyway, all of those 

sound like a big yawn.

Well, they’re probably more interesting than the Ramen Museum in Japan or the Salt ‘n Pepper Shaker Museum in Tennessee, or the Clown Museum in Wisconsin…

Think I’ll pass on those. Did you uncover ANY museums that would be worth the time and expense of traveling to them?

Okay. So, if we could handle the macabre, and as long as we never get locked inside one after closing time, there’s the Kunstkamera in Russia which has a massive collection of over 200,000 oddities like deformed fetuses and decapitated heads…

Trust the Russians to exhibit those!

…or the Siriraj Medical Museum in Thailand which focuses on death with gruesome exhibits like mutilated arms and legs, bullet holes in skulls, hemorrhaged brains…

Martha, STOP! I think my brain is hemorrhaging with this overload of hideous images. Reminds me of that time you and I went to a late-night drive-in in Alamogordo, New Mexico. They were playing “Night of the Living Dead”. Remember that? Do you remember how spooked we both were when we needed to go to the toilet during the intermission? The night sky was pitch black and neither of us wanted to admit it, but we were so shaken by all those ghouls we held hands and ran like hell to the washrooms and back to our car. That was almost as bad as being locked in one of those last two museums you mentioned. Ugh!

Oh how well I remember that…and how silly we both felt afterwards. Our imaginations do frightening things to us sometimes, don’t they? Well, just to get off the macabre, there is one more museum that I would just love to visit.

<sigh> Okay, where is it and would I enjoy it?

I don’t know if you’d enjoy it, but with my weird sense of humor, I think I’d get a real charge out of it. It’s in Iceland, and they’re offering very inexpensive flights from Canada directly to Iceland these days. 

Right! Well before we book a flight, what would we be going to see?

The Iceland Phallological Museum.

Come again? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?

Yep! It’s where you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about the male sex organ!

Are you serious, Martha? After 82 years on this earth and two children, I think I have a pretty good idea of what a penis is for and so do you!

True. But on its website, this museum says it’s probably the only museum in the world that contains a collection of phallic specimens. We can look at 276 penises ranging in size from 2 millimeters…don’t worry, that’s a hamster penis…to the 1.7-metre organ of a sperm whale. There are also lampshades made from bull testicles…

Enough woman!

Wait! I’m not done yet: in 2011, someone donated the penis of a 95-year-old Icelandic man to the exhibit!

Matthew? Matthew? 

Where did you go, Matthew?