Jon looks down on the camera, while the Royal Ontario Museum crystal hangs over him

Between snow and good old freelance work, we were stuck inside the first half of March Break, but we finally got out late in the week. We decided to head out to the ROM to see how Jon would take to dinosaur skeletons and other fun museum stuff in the new ROM crystal.

We talked a good game in line. Maybe we’d even spring for a membership, if he liked it. We could come back often…

Welllll, not so much. Jon was prepped and ready, and looked at the first dinosaur skeleton we happened upon, a velociraptor-esque creature of some kind, and tried to figure it out, to parse it. It was very, very difficult for him. I pointed out the teeth and claws, and he studied them, but even then you could see him starting to shut down.

The barosaurus

Later I pointed the enormous barosaurus’s tail, the stegosaurus’s tiny head, the ancient sea turtle and the pterosaur above us. And he’d gamely look at the shapes or pieces, and maybe he even made them out, but the complexity of the skeletal forms was too difficult to get a handle on. Pretty quickly his eyes (that is, his visual cortex) were tired, and he retreated into his iPod. This was okay: the room was quickly filling and the noise (which tends to compress Jon) was bouncing off the echo-y angled walls. But I should add that Jon did occasionally try to look, and he was very patient and didn’t get upset at all.

Jon retreats into his iPod, behind a really fake smile.

If Pinky and the Brain were dinosaurs, I know who this Pachycephalosaurus would be…

Oooh, check out the wing leather impression left in the fossil. They really did have a diamond-shaped membrane at the end of their tails!

Ten points to the first person who comments the name of this one below. Ten more points for the species name, and 50 for someone who can say why without looking it up. You’re on nerd’s honour. Anybody?

After the two rooms of dinosaurs and mammals, we scooted into another room. It was filled with antique typewriters prior to any kind of standardization. I tried to get Jon to guess what was in the display cases, but even as he looked at them all he could guess was dinosaurs, and he was a tad stressed. I asked if he could see letters and he blinked and said “Keyboard…” and all of the stress drained out of him. He was in his element. I explained that they were typewriters, what we had before we had computers, but he cut me off “Gingi has a typewriter!” He knew all about typewriters. Gingi is his school’s amazing art teacher (and, while I’m here, a victim of poorly thought out administrative cutbacks that has made her job basically untenable. Don’t get me started.)

Fake smile #2, but he’s way more relaxed, even enjoyed reading the sign behind him.

We headed down to the Darwin show (no cameras allowed). Jon was patient and mainly focused on his iPod while we explored the show. It took you through the man’s life with many facsimiles and a few real holograph writings, and possessions (and a lot of his flower pressings!). I was fascinated by the latter half of his life, as he sat on his realization, read a great deal on all sorts of topics and examined his theory from a great many points of view. He was incredibly prescient about the immense storm this would cause on society, and sadly still does. Shockingly (to me) the touring show has not had a single corporate sponsor since it started at the American Museum of Natural History in 2005. When it got to Toronto, it picked up its first two sponsors: the Humanist Association of Canada and The United Church Observer, which suggests that I could probably buy a sponsorship myself, with grocery money. An extremely sad commentary on both the intellects and the cajones of today’s corporations.

In the end, we headed out for a grand lunch of hot dogs and Greg’s Ice Cream. Greg was even there, so we got to chat with him (he and Jon talked new puppies). A fine end to March Break week.