Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Tut Tut

"Did you hear about what happened to King Tut's sarcophagus?" I asked the boys a few weeks ago when the story was in the news.

It sounded like the set-up for a joke and they eyed me warily.

(Side note: Remember the time I tried to surprise them with a trip to Disney World but they didn't believe me and begged us not to make them late for school? Maybe I'm a shitty parent.)

"It's not a joke," I assured them. "His beard was loose or had been removed for some reason and they needed to re-attach it for display, but instead of sending it to professionals who work to conserve big pieces of art, they just had someone glue it back on with epoxy, which is a glue that's kind of like tar. It oozed out around the edges a little bit and some got on his face so they tried to remove it with a spatula and scratched it. 3000 years of history and craftmanship ruined by some random guy."

Big Kid looked pained. "Can they fix it?"

"I don't know. Probably not the epoxy. I guess they might be able to fix a scratch? Can you imagine being the guy who screwed it up? King Tut should haunt him. That would be a good movie!" I had already mentally progressed to awesome plot lines but Big Kid wouldn't be deterred.

"It should be against the law. They should be arrested!" He was seething. Staring just past his computer screen but not quite at me.

"Yeah. I wonder about that. Is it illegal to be careless with artifacts?"

"People better be fired over this!"

"Do you want a smoothie for breakfast? I'm going to make one."

"My head hurts so bad because of this. I can't believe this could happen. I'm not sure I can eat right now, this is just awful. You're not sick about this?"

I was just trying to start a conversation, not ruin his whole day.

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