Shalom From New York,

    I saw the security guard spot the evil museum rule breaker before I saw the actual evil rule breaker.  The security guard went into that alert, ears pricked up—we  got a live one—pointer stance like a dog flushing a covey of Bobwhite. The molecules in his skin were standing at attention.

    “Boy, some yokel has really biffed it,” I said to my daughter.  We were visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  We were surrounded by centuries of priceless antiquities in the Greek and Roman statue garden.  It was possible to become faint from the smell of fragile history.

    My daughter gasped, “That’s no yokel.  That’s dad.”

    This next part happened in that weird slow motion that kicks in when airplanes crash or the grandkids tumble of the furniture.

    At the sound of her shock and awe I turned (slowly) to see my wonderful husband of thirty years leaning against the bust of some Goat God of Ithaca. He (my husband not the goat god) practically had his elbow in the empty eye socket of an irreplaceable piece of irreplaceable goat god history. He was taking a cell phone call (my husband not the goat god.)

    “Noooooooooooo! Sherwooooooooooood, . . . don’t . . . do . . . it!!!!!!!!” I yelled.  My voice echoed through the statue garden like the voice of a long dead Greek person.

    The security guard honed in for the kill.

    I thought about throwing myself in front of the bullet when I saw my wonderful husband put his finger in his free ear to block out the sound of Captain Security Guard saying, “Sir, don’t lean on the art,” and “No cell phone calls in the museum.”

    Those were his exact words.  I believe the actual subtext of this warning could more accurately be translated, “Listen up, you hillbilly—from whatever swamp you crawled out of—you wouldn’t know a piece of priceless art if it bit you on your hillbilly butt but try not to leave your hillbilly grease on the marble, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

    Horrified, Heather, Phillip, and I melted away into the gift shop (i.e. we ditched the hillbilly), but not before we took a snap shot of Sherwood and the security guard with a forbidden flash.  “Lady, there’s no flash photography in the museum.”

    The picture turned out great,

    . . . and then the camera got stolen.

    To be continued . . .

Linda (Art Lover) Zern    

   

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