My Funny Valentine.... Date

I wanted to plan a nice date for Josh and me to have for Valentines Day this year.  I've never planned our Valentines before.  Yep.  12 Valentines together and this was the first one I planned. 

I decided to take him somewhere we couldn't generally go with the kids.  It was pretty obvious where we could go when I heard an ad on the radio for the Body Worlds exhibit at the Arizona Science Center.  This exhibit had come to Denver in 2006, just before we had our membership to the museum.  It was too far away and too expensive to justify going, I thought.  But Josh really wanted to go.  He even considered taking his brother with him, but with school schedules it just didn't pan out. 

I've been a little nervous about going to this exhibit.  I wanted to go because Josh has wanted to see it for five years.  But when you explain it to people, it sounds like a lesson on being a psychotic serial killer.  A scientist named Gunther von Hagens discovered a way to stop the decomposition of the human body, providing a real sample of the human body that can be studied repeatedly, not just in a one time instance like a typical cadaver. 

Yeah, that's where the weirdness kind of comes in.  The exhibit is a display of actual human bodies that have exposed muscles, bones and organs.  But to walk through it is a whole different type of experience.




I was a little nervous that my sad mood from the previous day was going to be a problem, but I had a lot of fun being with Josh and seeing the wonder of the human body.  After seeing, and I mean literally seeing, how incredible the body is, no one can ever convince me that we are on this Earth by chance. 

There was even a little healing that happened.  While looking at the displays of fetuses (feti?) I realized how there is so much that could go wrong in a baby's development.  Much more than I knew.  No wonder there are such horrible things as miscarriages.  So much needs to come together just right.  The complexities of the body are so difficult to comprehend.

And really, the displays of the people weren't really all that creepy.  And I don't do creepy very well.  Quite honestly I did get a little queasy at one point of the exhibit.  But I had to disconnect myself from the reality of what I was looking at.  I definitely think the exhibit is not for everyone, but was still pretty amazing to see.  Josh seemed to enjoy it, and that was the whole point.

Probably the most amazing thing of the whole exhibit (beyond the fascination of the complexity of life) is the fact that all of the full bodies were permanently posed.  There was one called the Diver.  It was a woman on the edge of a diving board.  The front part of her body came over her toes as if she was about to dive, her organs and center of her body stood up straight so you could see how they all fit within her body, and the back of her looked like it was leaning backward.  The only things holding her in position were her two big toes that were secured onto the diving board.  There were no strings, no cases, just this technique Dr von Hagens invented called Plastination where a polymer is infused into the cells.  And the exhibit didn't smell, either. 

If I hadn't experienced this myself and was just reading about it, I'd probably be a little sick to my stomach.  After all, I nearly fainted a few months ago when I sliced my finger.  But you have to see it to truly appreciate it. 

Of course, there were also displays of things like the brain, heart, lungs, intestines, artificial joints, and other such things. 

It really was an amazing thing to experience.

After the museum we decided to grab some lunch before heading home.  So we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe.  Josh and I have both been to the Cafe before, but in different cities and with different people.  So this was our first visit together.  And really, I think he agreed to go because he knew I'd enjoy it and we'd just spent a few hours at the museum.  It was nice of him to agree.  So we sat down and noticed that the display over our table was John Lennon's jacket.  Hello!  Awesome! 

In the menu it explained that Eric Clapton asked his favorite restaurant, Hard Rock Cafe London, to mark his preferred table with a plaque with his name on it.  They said, how about a guitar instead?  He agreed and the rest is history.  So I had to wonder.... if Clapton comes into the London Cafe and wants his table is it something where it's always vacant in case he comes in, or will the people eating there have to move?  Josh told me it's probably the second, people would be asked to move. 

Then he said, "If John Lennon came in here and wanted this table, don't you think you'd move?"  I laughed and told him, "No.  I'd say, 'No, John Lennon's ghost!  You can't have my table I was here first!'"  Really, I'd probably have to be removed by the staff because I'd have fainted and fallen on the ground.  Then I'd buy a Hard Rock t-shirt and have him sign it and make a million dollars on E-bay.  I'm guessing.

All in all, it was a great date.  We're starting to realize the importance of doing activities it wouldn't be good to do with kids whenever we can.  Otherwise, we'll never do them.  There's no way the kids could've come to the Body Worlds with us and the Hard Rock is a little too expensive to buy food that may or may not be eaten.  I loved being with Josh and laughing with him and having conversations about things other than what the kids are doing. 

I'm even more excited for our vacation next month.