Funny stories from my vacation

**87th PVI** · May 11th, 2009, 03:18 PM

Just spent 10 days in Colonial Williamsburg... now I have to go back to work tomorrow.

Here's some funny stories for you.
We go there quite a bit and as a result, we are friends with many of the people who work there, so we get to hear the "good stuff" like the story about the woman who was walking her Chihuahua without a leash & was warned in the morning by one of the employees that there are red tailed hawks there that eat the squirrels and her dog wasn't much bigger than a squirel...she didn't bide by the warning &... well you can guess what happened that afternoon! Or the story about the woman who professed to be a history teacher & then went on to compare the slave ships to a Disney cruise... the list goes on & on. Well this time we got some new ones.

I won't use real names here so... "George" is one of the people who sit at the entrance of a building and check tickets, count visitors coming in to that building, and answer general questions... We were talking about the dumb questions they get and he said one woman asked, "What time do they turn the birds on and off each day?" She thought the local wild song birds were speakers in the trees!
He then told us that he was recently talking to a couple and behind them he noticed two kids playing in/with the horse & ox poop in the street. He asked the couple if they were their kids and they said yes. "George" then said well you might want to stop them from playing in that brown stuff in the street. The woman said, It's ok, that's not real. "George" was left speechless!
"George" did admit that he had his own monument in the stupid hall of fame... He grew up in the ghetto & therefore didn't know about certain things that we may take for granted... at the beginning of The Color Purple when they show that sunflower... he exclaimed, "Wow! That sure is a big dandelion!" He said his wife will never let him live that one down!

Another friend of ours, "Thomas", is a carpenter. He was up on a roof replacing shingles one day and a woman asked if he was working on the roof. He said he just paused as he tried to think of something to say that wouldn't get him fired... After a pregnant pause he ended up just saying well, I'm up here & I'm hammering, so...Yeah, I guess I am. (I said he should've said he was working on his tan & he said that crossed his mind) But then he said he could top that one...
They put fresh tar on some of the roofs recently. They had a sign up that said WET TAR. He said on no less than three occasions, visitors came up to him and asked why they spelled water like that, and every one of them had black stuff smudged on them somewhere.
As we were talking to him about this another couple came up & was listening in... He then said to them that he was just catching up with some friends and asked if they had any questions about carpentry in the 18th century... the look on their face was priceless as I could almost hear them thinking, "Don't ask a stupid question! Don't ask a stupid question!"

"John" is another one we enjoy talking with. He plays a drum in the African American programs & he's very talented. During the day, he is stationed at buildings checking tickets, etc. He plays his drum sometimes while he's checking tickets because while doing that, they are supposed to fit in to the scenery as a slave, shop keeper, etc... just the general folks you'd see around town in the 18th century... some play an instrument like a flute, pennywhistle, etc, others carve, knit, scrimshaw, etc as long as it was something done in the 18th century and they use 18th century looking tools and techniques or instruments... "John" sometimes plays his drum...That same woman who compared the slave ships to a Disney cruise also tried to tell him they didn't have drums in the 18th century and she actually called the police on him for playing his drum because it was harassing her ears. The police checked with his supervisor to make sure he was allowed to play on the job, & they said that is part of his job. That was the end of that, & the lady was asked to move along.
Back before they sold Carters Grove last year, they had a slave quarter on that site and "John" told us that people would ask (all concerned) if they really lived there, or why they stayed there & lived like that.

Sometimes they joke with the people but that can backfire... "John" once gave directions to the restroom to some kid and then added as a joke, or the third tree on the left works too... a few minutes later, he looked up to see the kid down the street pissing on the third tree on the left!

We also stopped at Mt Vernon on the way home, and were not disappointed in the stupid question department... right next to me a woman who had to be 55+ asked why she didn't see any bathrooms. How does one live 55 years on this earth in an age when even their grandparents probably (& great grandparents almost certainly) didn't have indoor toilets as kids & not know that they had outhouses (or to use a period term, necessaries) in the 18th century?

Well I guess that still doesn't top the people who ask the Park Rangers at Gettysburg why there aren't any bullet holes on any of the monuments.

Public education in America...God help us all!

**MaxPower** · May 12th, 2009, 04:22 AM

lols! Great laughs....but EXACTLY the reason I refuse to go back into the teaching profession. No way in hell do I wanna be associated or even accused of being responsible for the sad state of education our youth demonstrate today....