by Tonya Nystrom

Created on: June 06, 2008   Last Updated: November 25, 2008

Does a museum really have to be boring? Ask any childthey will all give you a different answer. I have two children that are 7 years apart. My youngest will go to a museum on any given day. My oldest has never had the desire to walk inside of a museum. I have not raised them any differently but I think one has an imagination and the other does not.

My son can walk into a museum and automatically begin to feel the life of what was going on in the day of whatever the museum is about. For instance, as a child he requested we visit the Pensacola Naval Air Station Museum. He loved to visit all of the walls and read each individual plaque. Each person was real to him. They were a pilot or an engineer and each had a picture next to a name and they were all real people.

They also have cockpits that you can climb into and play with the controls and make believe you are flying and bombing and doing all the things you do in the fighter jets. Adults can climb in these cockpits as well and they do! It is just amazing the feeling you get inside the cockpit of a used fighter jet or inside the blue angel plane that flew so many times above you in so many formations. You can almost feel yourself flying if you let your imagination go! To aid you in this, they also have a simulator ride that takes your for a short ride of your choice in an airplane. This is a must do! It is simply amazing the feeling you get while in this simulator! Do this first before getting into the cockpit of the real planes and let your imagination run wild.

In one area of the museum is a "dark room" where they have found a crashed plane from one of the wars and they brought the plane back to the museum and built the room to look like the area where the plane was found. Wow is that an eerie place to walk into. Just gives you the creeps to walk into this room but it is a reality room. A pilot died in that crash and it is what it is!

They have many areas blocked off that are dedicated to the different wars and also the POW's. You can see authentic letters and pictures the officers at war received from home and wrote back. You walk up into these areas, and with your imagination, these men and women begin to become your family as you read their letters and look at them. It is just amazing if you let it.

My son and I visited this museum every other Tuesday for 3 years until he began school. We never grew tired of it. We did not look at the same area every time but decided on a few areas to really study and concentrate on each time. We too our lunch and went outside to watch the Blue Angels practice during the afternoon which was also a highlight!

Yes, museums can be wonderful with your imagination or you can simply walk through them and read what they say and then leave. It is simply up to the individual. In doing the latter, you lose so much history that is there for you to gain and to know and to retain!

So the next time you go to a museum, be it with your child, another adult, or just yourself, look at it in a different lightlook at it in the eyes of the person who donated the items to the museum. Every item there means something to somebody and there is a story behind every single itemcan you just imagine the stories that building has to tell!

Learn more about this author, Tonya Nystrom.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.