Each year nearly 30 million people visit the Smithsonian museum complex in Washington DC. My first visit was over 60 years ago when my family and I lived in Laurel Maryland. That era predated the I-495 beltway because it also predated the existence of the Interstate Highway System, then little more than a gleam in the eyes of slide rule wielding transportation engineers. A trip from the little rural town of Laurel into DC was a full day trip down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, and on warm summer days we would pack up the Plymouth and head due south. Driving into the city we would motor past the Washington Monument, which I would call the Washington Mommyment to the delight of my parents and eye-rolling mortification of my brothers. Then we would park the car on a street near the mall and simply walk out to see one of the great wonders of the world. A different time, then.
I have visited Laurel more recently and find it difficult to navigate through a landscape devoid of known landmarks. The cities of Baltimore and Washington have grown together to form the Metroplex, absorbing all the intervening spaces. Once rural, Laurel is now one of many suburbs. Such change is alarming, especially if you spent years away, like seeing your neighbor’s children magically grown to adulthood when you meet again after many years.
My daughter and I visited my son in Springfield Virginia recently, and during that visit we took the Metro in to see the Smithsonian and the surrounding government complex. Even after the intervening decades the place has a timeless quality about it. As we walked past 
the White House I told my kids that they could become the President of United States. My daughter asks, “Is it nice inside?”– a question so unexpected I cannot reply, or if I did the answer is lost in history. We walked up to the Washington Mommyment, which my daughter calls The Obelisk. The monument starts out reasonable when you are far away, but as you get closer and closer it swells to occupy all physical reality. I find it strangely disorienting to be standing next to objects so large. We thought we might head over to the Lincoln Memorial, but man that looks far away, and I really wanted to see the Museum of Natural History.
As we enter this museum (body scanners!) I get flashbacks from 1956, seeing myself there as a small child; filled with the same sense of wonder. So much to learn and so little time.
Here is where I decide things are going so well that I might as well “pull a Fenton”. I go to throw away my gum, which by this point has lost all its flavor and become a stiff little ball of incipient badness. It somehow gets stuck between my thumb and forefinger and the more I try to dislodge it the stickier and more recalcitrant it becomes. Like the Blob in the movie it slowly captures each finger in turn until my palm is smeared with this nasty goo and I sense it may be attempting to control my thoughts. I notice that I have been standing in front of the trashcan for far too long, so I excuse myself and head off to the restroom. Finding a restroom proves more challenging than I thought, perhaps distracted by The Material and its mind controlling powers. There! A restroom thanks be! Bolting inside I head for the sink, turn on the water but what’s this? The gum hardens even further in water and I am momentarily struck by the irony of a stick of gum with the staying power of dinosaurs and an apparent half-life of millions of years. I wonder if one day there will be a bronze statue in the rotunda of a hunched and tattered homunculus entitled, “Dumb Guy”. By the time I rub the stuff off me, my hands are as red and raw as a Maine lobsterman hauling in his catch.
I never told the kids this so it will be our little secret, ok? (oh, wait…)
Anyway, the good news is that for all our collective difficulties, carnivorous gum included, the institutes and museums of the Smithsonian are there and waiting, a record of who we are, where we have been and all the places we’ve yet to go.
Get out there.
whoisfenton 