Wednesday Whittleings—To Be a Figure in a Wax Museum

Wednesdays are my day to randomly babble. Sometimes about children books, others about writing, and usually about whatever strikes my mind. Random thoughts...random whittleings.

Last night was Wax Museum Night at the school. This is actually one of the activities I find the school does a great job with. It's fun to go every year and see what the kids come up with. 

Each child in the 5th grade draws a famous individual's name out of a hat, does research on the person, and then stands along the wall dressed up as they would have been (or something close). There are paper buttons taped to the wall along with a name tag next to each child. When pushed, the child states who they are, maybe what they did to make them 'famous', and a well-known quote from the person (or thought to be).

It's cute...although most of the kids stand pretty stiff and give off that 'Just let me get this done and out of here' aura. 

My daughter was Cleopatra and seeing all of the bored kids around her, decided to add some life to the whole thing. She did a constant 'Egyptian' dance until someone would press her button. Then, she'd stand still and say her lines. If someone pushed her button repeatedly to irritate her, she'd freeze in a 'dab' pose. 

I don't think Cleopatra ever dabbed. But what do I know?

A few 'figures' down from her stood Jeff Kinney (and for those of you who don't know because I didn't know either....I'm SO bad with names). He's the author of The Wimpy Kid series. First, it struck me odd that he was considered famous enough to stand between Anne Frank and Thomas Jefferson. But who am I to judge?

Then as I pressed the button and listened to the kid mumble some line which I really couldn't hear because he barely opened his mouth,  I thought... Ho. How awful would that be to have my books become so popular one day that some poor kid in some little school would pull my name out of a hat and have to spend an entire 1 and 1/2 hours standing stiff along a wall dressed like me? The kid did look miserable.

Of course, this thought shoots off into a huge realm of probability issues, so I'm not loosing sleep over it yet.

I do wonder what Jeff Kinney would think if he'd been there. 

If the kid would have even cared?

Interestingly enough, Laura Ingalls Wilder was there too, and I didn't spare a second thought on her. But then, that little girl did look cute and smiled too.

The lesson I learned from the whole thing? Either look cute and smile, or dance and dab.