On our trip to London we took in the wax works at Madame Tussauds. It was a sign of Meilo and Dahlia's maturity that we made it. Let me explain. While I was getting my MFA in creative writing at OSU, I took a course in uncanny literature. The uncanny is a class of frightening things that are disturbing in part because they are uncomfortably familiar or personal. The kids were always curious to know what I was studying, so we filled our car rides to and from school with strange, ghostly and unsettling stories that I was reading at the time. The effect was deep. Dahlia started to question whether her dolls were coming alive at night and insisted on sleeping on the floor for a week, and Meilo wondered (albeit only briefly) whether he had been substituted by a fascimile. When it came time to go to the wax museum in Newport, they both adamantly refused, saying, "It sounds too uncanny, Mommy." Fast forward a couple of years and they happily marched around Madame Tussauds taking pictures. Side note: Only Stefan was brave enough to walk through the wax horror house; the kids and I know our limits.
Dahlia dined with Audrey Hepburn and Meilo dropped in on Steven Spielberg.
Christina Aguilera and Will Smith both seemed to have other things on their minds.
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