Junior The Bear Visits The Gateway to the West (Going East?)

Sometimes on the trips with Fatman I get a little confused. I mean take the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. It is the Gateway Arch to the West, but we were going East.



So Fatman takes me down to the hotel lobby in the elevator and shows me this Junior high rainbow shaped thing in the lobby called The Arch. He takes my picture and says this is the Gateway Arch and it houses the Museum of Westward Expansion. OK, but if we were going East wouldn't it be the Museum of Eastern Contraction?



I really thought, well that must be a miniature museum if in was in this arch.
So I imagined little tiny wagons and horses and people and stuff like that.
Well I was a bit confused. Fatman said, no this is not the Arch, this is a model of the Arch.
Oh, well, he didn't make that clear.



So we go outside of the hotel and he points to the real Arch. Dang, that's really big.
So he sticks me in the backpack and off we go to the museum. He tells me it is underground and there's a movie theater and that he will take my picture with all sorts of stuff and we can ride to the top of the Arch and look out of the tiny little windows that I could see from down here.
Well, that did not happen.

We go into the museum and there are these guys with magic wands that reveal the presence of metal and things that might be dangerous you know. 9-11 stuff or so Fatman said.

So they "wand" me and the wands sing like a bird. Fatman you see has stuffed my feet with BB's to weigh them down to help me stand up. So they put me on a moving table thing and I go through a little tunnel and then they pick me up by an ear pulling out a couple of stitches and pull Fatman out of the line and bring him over. It seems they wanted to cut me open. CUT ME OPEN! Well he had some fast talking to do, and I don't really think the police type guys believed him. Eventually they put me in a plastic box with the number 26 on it and give Fatman a card with the same number on it.

There I was, upside down, boots hanging over the top, and not going anywhere. The only thing that kept it from being really boring was that there was an American Girl doll dressed up like an Indian in the box next to me, box number 25. Talk about pissed, she really really want to go into the museum. After a very long time Fatman came back smelling of hamburgers and redeemed me. Stuffing me into the backpack which was in box 27, we left.

I haven't spoken to Fatman since then. It has been several hours now. I'm not sure I will talk to him for quite some time actually. Cut me Open?????

JTB