"I like old people"

Says my 71 year-old co-worker at the museum. I don't think he knows why I laugh every time he says that.

My job is a mixture of boring and exciting at the same time. All in all, I love it. If you ever get the chance to work at a small-town museum, go for it. It's an unforgettable experience, to be sure.

My musuem is run by seniors. Every year on Canada Day they have a huge open-house type thing, with the steamer, well-driller, thresher, and clay oven going all day long so people can see how things were done "in the old days". In preparation for that day, I got to know the old helpers quite well - they always came for coffee every day, at 10am and 3pm, sharp. The coffee always had to be made on time. And there had to be plenty of cookies, too.

The men sat at one end of the table, while the woman (and I) sat at the other. I had the advantage of being able to hear both ends of the conversation: the men would talk or argue over machinery, the DC Case, how to fix the well-driller, etc. The women would chat about their flowers, what they planned to do at the lake that weekend, their quilting projects, and whether it's worth buying a rechargable battery for their husbands' hearing aids.

In just two months, Monday till Friday, coffee time sometimes extending to over and hour and a half long, I've gained an extensive knowledge of all the above, as well as how to trap a mole, that banana goes quite nicely with rhubarb, that we need more dummies so we can show off all those old clothes in the storage room, that it's good for plants to pick off the dead flowers every once in awhile, that Mrs. So-and-so has bought a new condo and is moving in by the end of the month and must downsize a lot so she might need more than one garage sale, that people need to stop bringing in their mother's sewing machines or old type-writers because we have more than we can store, and that goes for old pump organs too, that that one brand of ant killer really does the trick, and apparently using seven-up in your pie crust in place of vinegar works just as good.

Things have slowed down a little, now that the Canada Day celebrations are over and the clean-up is almost done. I'm going to miss our frequent coffee-chats. But I'm sure they'll keep coming back every so often, if they think I should know that the rechargable battery in Mr. So-and-so's hearing aid was worth it.