(I volunteer as a tour guide for a group of six- and seven-year-olds in a natural history museum that has a famous dinosaur collection. Before lunch, the kids visit a temporary exhibition, and after lunch it’s time for the dinosaurs. During lunch, one of the kids is impatient and wolfs down his lunch so fast that his teacher needs to remind him several times to take smaller bites. At the same table, there’s a girl that’s eating very calmly, and she’s one of the last to finish. The boy insists that she eats faster.)

Teacher: “[Boy], give [Girl] the time to eat. There will be time enough to visit the dinosaurs.”

Me: *jokingly* “Yeah, don’t worry; the dinos won’t run away.”

Girl: *in an “I can’t believe I need to explain this” voice* “That’s because they’re dead.”

(The museum is about to close and my colleagues are conducting final checks on galleries. We are keeping contact via radios. I have just asked [Colleague #1] to check our Ancient Egypt gallery.)

Colleague #1: “Yeah, it’s all fine; the gallery is completely empty.”

Colleague #2: “But the artefacts are still there, right?”

Colleague #1: “It’s empty of people.”

Colleague #2: “But the mummies are still there, right?”

Colleague #1: “It’s empty of living people.”

Me: “But you’re still there, right?”

Colleague #1: “I’m dead on the inside.”

(My family and I are visiting the Smithsonian and are looking at the Star Spangled Banner. It says in multiple places with pictures, “No Photography.” I see a girl around my age get her phone out.)

Me: “Hey, just so you know, they don’t allow pictures. You might want to put it away so you don’t get in trouble.”

Girl: “Hey, thanks.”

(She then takes a picture right in front of the museum guard.)

Guard: “Ma’am, no photos are allowed! Please put your phone away.”

Girl: “It’s okay, though; I didn’t use the flash!”

(I heard the guard yell at five people while we were in there. Is it really so important for you to get the picture that you’re willing to damage a national treasure?)

(The accessible stall in our museum’s bathroom is made of two regular stalls, minus the interior partition. One of the existing doors works; the other is bolted shut. Innumerable customers enter the stall, forget which door they entered from, and believe themselves to be locked in. I am at my desk in my office when a man comes to the door.)

Man: “My wife has been locked in your bathroom for 15 minutes!”

Me: “I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll call maintenance and send them in to unstick the door, right away.”

(I call maintenance, and they say they are on their way.)

Man: “I’m back. My wife crawled under the stall to free herself. You really should be ashamed of yourself.”

(Later…)

Maintenance: “The door wasn’t stuck. She must have been trying to get out through the old bolted door.”

Me: “Yeah, that happens a lot. I used to think lobster traps were absurd, but after seeing humans forget where their door is, I’m rethinking things!”

The museum I love to visit has a huge central hall, with a big staircase at the back that splits to both sides about halfway up. On that landing, there’s a statue of Charles Darwin. Until quite recently, the view of the statue from the front of the hall was obscured by Dippy, a life-sized model of a Diplodocus skeleton, so to first time visitors, the Darwin statue would come as a surprise.

One time when I was visiting the museum, I was standing to the side of the hall near the stairs, not looking at anything in particular, when I saw three teenage girls passing Dippy on the way to the staircase.

As soon as they saw the statue of Darwin, their whole demeanour changed. They started squealing as if they’d just seen a boy band there, and then they raced each other up the stairs and took selfies with Charles Darwin.

Seeing that kind of happy nerdage at a time when mindless entertainment and pseudoscience seem to be on the rise everywhere really gave me hope for the world.