I cannot exactly pinpoint the fascination that mummies hold for me. I don't even know when I began to be interested.
I bet a therapist would have a lot to say:
"You like the idea of being preserved at your best." Heck, yeah. I started using anti-aging cream when I was 28. And Botox isn't just for migraines, you know.
"You want to people to pay close attention to you, even if you're dead." I think it's more about people SERVING me, even though I'm dead. Just because I'm gone doesn't mean people should stop doing what I tell them to do.
"You think if you can't enjoy your things, no one else should be able to either, so they might as well bury them with you." Well, that's just normal, right? Right?
"You seem to be attracted to scarily thin men." ... erm ... no comment.
So my favorite movie is, of course, The Mummy. I remember the first time I watched it. I was hesitant to watch it at first, because I thought it was going to be really scary, but as soon as it was over, I rewound the tape and watched it again. To date, I have seen this film approximately 26 times, and that is not an exaggeration.
[I fully intend, should I ever make good on my threat to adopt an unfortunate foreign baby, to saddle her with the name Evelyn because I love that character. I might even go with Anak-sun-amun, but only if she's really really good.]
I make at least one of my classes watch it every year (it's educational: My social studies classes were studying Egypt, so we watched it. My study skills classes were reading myths, so we watched it. My theater classes read Twelve Angry Men, so we watched it (because the mummy is angry. And a man). I can talk about this movie at the drop of a hat, and most likely will, without any provocation, because IT IS AWESOME AND I LOVE IT.
So what was the first thing I did when I went to London? Well, you know how, in The Mummy Returns, that kid goes to the British Museum and the mummies wake up and try to kill him?
If I told you that my plane landed at 6:49 and I was at the British Museum at 7:59, would you be surprised?
Clearly, there were no mummies waiting to kill me, even though I kind of hoped there would be. But I was so excited just to be in the PRESENCE of mummies that I might have done a little jig right there in the main foyer of the museum. Right next to the Rosetta Stone.
So guess what happened. The person I was traveling with MYSTERIOUSLY got sick to her stomach, and I had to rush through the Egypt Wing in like, an hour. An HOUR!
THAT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE!
You can't see all the Egyptian stuff in an hour. Plus, there was a special movie about how they autopsied a real mummy. I couldn't see that in an hour. AND, there was a bog body in the museum, and that is a type of mummy, and it was not even in the Egypt Wing, it was over in the Historic England wing, and YOU KNOW I AM BAD AT DIRECTIONS IT WOULD TAKE ME FOREVER TO FIND IT.
An hour. Sheesh.
If it were ME who was feeling sick, I would have been like, "I know that this is THE ONE THING that you've wanted to do, and you've really talked of nothing else for the two years we've been planning this trip, and it's really just a stomachache, not the Ebola virus, and I will be okay in an hour anyway, and maybe I will watch some British tv [or tell the British public at large the several thousand ways in which Kansas State is superior to University of Kansas, or find some way to hijack your itinerary that you spent MONTHS researching and planning out, or become terrifyingly helpless even though I am twenty-nine years old and live by myself and own my own house but now that I'm in another country I'm like a kitten whose mom has died and I must depend on you to remind me to BREATHE for heavens sakes or else I might die, or find some other way to completely frustrate and enrage you on this trip by trying out my passive-aggressive techniques that I learned while I was getting my masters degree (oh, you don't have one? I guess that makes me better than you, then)]* and that will make me feel a whole lot better, so why don't you take as long as you want and I will go back to the hotel and take a nap." That is what I would have said.
*based on actual events experienced by me on this trip
My traveling companion, though, is not Southern, and so had a very basic nonworking knowledge of The Polite Thing To Do, and therefore was very impatient to leave, while I was all, "But the mummies! I can't leave the mummies!" She was adamant; I MUST see everything in the whole freaking museum within the hour because her STOMACH HURT and she wanted to LEAVE and why wasn't I being a GOOD FRIEND and who did I love more, her or the mummies?
I truly had to take a moment to think it through.
Frankly, that is when I began to regret taking the trip with her. Approximately two hours after the plane touched down.
Y'all. Don't come between me and the mummies. It will not bode well for our friendship.
I zoomed through the museum, saw one (1) mummy, dashed around the Elgin Marbles (which is really just the top of the Parthenon; I did not know that but I think I probably should have, but I know it now so it's okay), stood on my tiptoes to see the Rosetta Stone (while trying to scoot around the large Arab man who was standing right in front of me; like, you don't OWN it, sir; other people might like to see it too!), and bought one (1) souvenir that may just be one of my favorite things that I own:
I know, right? It's like the British Museum Souvenir Makers Committee had a brainstorming session in which someone said, "Now what would be the perfect thing for Mei Flower, because I hear she's coming over here," and someone else piped up and said, "I know the PERFECT THING."
It only cost 1.95, so that's a bonus right there.
So it was not a total bust, but due to my rigid itinerary and my "friend's" random trashing of said itinerary, I was not able to make it back to the museum on that trip. Which is why I will be taking my next trip to London with either a) no one, or b) another mummy-o-phile who has an iron stomach and also is Southern.
[Those are a lot of run-on sentences, Mei Flower, you are thinking, but I do not teach your child how to WRITE, so people, please ... let's focus.]
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Here is the part about the meltdown:
Given my extremely inappropriate fascination with mummies, I almost FELL OVER with excitement when I heard on the news that a new tomb has been found in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. This is the first new tomb discovered since 1922, when King Tut was found (gee, I hope THIS tomb's not cursed).
I have been looking for updated articles on this story every day, but, sadly, things are either moving very very slowly or someone is just keeping secrets to make me mad. COME ON, EGYPT, I NEED TO KNOW!
My dad says that maybe the Egyptians want to make sure that nobody runs off with anymore of their treasures, ENGLAND, and I think that's probably true. That does not, however, make me any less anxious to hear some more news.
I mean, can you imagine? What if you were a grad student, just expecting to find some pottery or something, and you stumbled upon an actual tomb, right there where the pyramids are and everything? I'd pee my pants with excitement!
Seriously, I am still a little giddy over this discovery, even though it happened last week and nobody else in the whole world cares. But I care! Because: MUMMIES!!!
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