I Love Children at the ROM
I usually go to great lengths to avoid kids. I don’t find it amusing to be at movie theatres with them. I think they’re noisy and sloppy on the street and I worry about the future of the country when I watch kids hanging listlessly around shopping malls or talking incessantly on cells phones. But at the ROM, fighting my way to Druxy’s past hundreds of school-age kids, the sight of all this youth has the opposite impact; I think the future will be okay.

Even in the midst of construction last year, over a million people visited the ROM and I’ve heard predications that two million may visit it when the renovation is complete in summer 2006. A good number of these visitors are young. It’s always been this way and there is a reservoir of good feelings because few forget their childhood visits here. They recall the wonder of it when they bring their own children back, or their grandchildren.

All these boisterous, fidgeting, loud kids are excited because they’ve seen something cool. They’re talking to their friends about some neat fish or ugly something or other, or should I say they’re yelling at their friends about what they’ve discovered. Virtual reality is not the only reality. Real things in the world, even old things, have made an impact on them. There are no pop singers or movie stars and kids still get excited, even the most seemingly cynical of teenagers. It gives me hope.