A small vent if I may

The other day Jason told me that he wanted to see an "original copy" of the Declaration of Independence, that is currently traveling the country, during it's stop in Utah. After pointing out that "original copy" is an oxymoron I agreed to come along. At first I pictured a new but nicely made copy of the DoI and thought I was agreeing to a 20 minute, or so, event. We walked into the capital, where the document was displayed, and were immediately pointed toward a video that was playing with an explanation of what we were about to see. I was wrong. The document on tour was not a new copy, it was one of the original Dunlop Broadsides which are technically older than the signed DoI. At this point I was actually quite excited to see this important piece of American History.

We walked upstairs and stepped into line. Judging from the length of the line I thought maybe we'd be looking at 45 minutes, maybe an hour. We moved along slowly, so slowly in fact that at one point I sat down to give my aching feet a rest and the line didn't move enough for me to get up for 25 minutes. I can't imagine having been one of the several families with small children in line. After three hours Jason walked up to the front to ask why it was taking so long and could we find a way to speed things up. It was at this point that I got a clear view of how the viewing was being handled. They would have each party to walk up separately into the circle of rope surrounding the document and allow them whatever time they wanted. Even after Jason spoke to the attendant I saw a family of 7 or 8 walk up to the document, take a family photo, turn around and read for a minute or so, take another family photo, turn around and read some more and then take individual photos with the document before turning around one last time to read. Is it just me or is this little excessive? Well we and the several other families who had to leave, after over 3 hours of waiting, without getting to see the document, certainly thought so!!!!! I was so angry at standing in line for so long only to have to leave, so that we could make 7:00pm dinner plans with friends, that I yelled the whole way out of the building. Maybe excessive on my part but damn it I was mad! What I find most interesting is that we left at 6:30pm foreseeing at least 2 more hours of wait time ahead of us should we stay. The gal Jason spoke with said that the exhibit closed at 8:00pm and that they might be able to allow those in line to stay a bit after 8:00pm. Might?! How could they seriously have the heart to just kick people out after they waited 4 maybe even 5 hours to see this?

Anyway, if it comes to your town let's hope your event planners are smarter than the ones in Utah. It seemed like a really cool thing to see!