Exploring the majestic gift shops of Chattanooga, Tennessee – Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
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Adam Armour Mug 2019 ADAM ARMOUR
News Editor
Adam Armour Mug 2019 ADAM ARMOUR
Arlie’s eyes grew wide as we entered the museum’s small gift shop, her mind no doubt racing with visions of all the knickknacks, stuffed toys, stickers, magnets, logo-embossed clothing and other premium-priced items she would soon be begging us to own.
Like any gift shop worth its salt, the one that greeted visitors of the Creative Discovery Museum in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, was stuffed wall-to-wall with items you wouldn’t dream of buying in your day-to-day life, but that somehow feel essential when you’re exploring the landmarks of some foreign city. Over the years, we’ve undoubtedly spent the equivalent of a dumb but determined child’s college education on refrigerator magnets, bottle openers (some of which are also refrigerator magnets), window decals, collectible books and various tiny doodads that went from must-haves to insta-regrets the moment we set foot back home.
I silently cursed whatever marketing/engineering genius designed the museum so that guests actually entered through the gift shop, instantaneously filling the children of hapless parents with the desire for roughly $14,000 worth of souvenirs.
As if innately lured by some inaudible siren song, Arlie dashed to a wall of plush animals — poly-bean-stuffed critters that seemed to have very little to do with the theme of the museum itself. Within a heartbeat, she was elbow-deep in the pile of toys, hunting for some buried treasure only she could sense.
“What can I get?” she said as she submerged her head in the mass of colorful creatures. Even muffled, I could hear her voice trembling under the weight of all that possibility.
“Let’s wait until we’re about to leave the museum,” I suggested, desperately eyeballing the exit/gateway to the actual exhibits.
“Yeah, Arlie,” Mandy, my wife, added. “You don’t want to have to lug something around the entire time we’re here.”
And by that, she meant we did not want to have to lug something around the entire time we were here.
The kid took this suggestion with all the grace you’d expect from a 5-year-old.
“AwwWWWWwwwwwwwww,” she said, stretching what would normally be a single-syllable expression of disappointment to a length that seemed to defy the laws of time and space.
Following several minutes of begging/threatening, Mandy and I finally pried our offspring’s body from the gift shop. Her mind, however, was another story. Our visit to the museum — designed specifically to enrapture and enrich the developing brains of Arlie-aged children — was inundated with frequent questions about when we could return to the gift shop and, once there, what precisely she would be allowed to purchase.
Two hours and a small stuffed cat, by the way.
It was a similar story when we dropped by Ruby Falls the next day. Our visit to the ancient underground cavern and the majestic never-ending vomit of water for which it was named began with an hour-and-a-half wait for our scheduled tour inside the gift shop, giving our materialistic child plenty of time to ruminate about all the this-and-thats she wanted to leave there carrying.
Again, despite our little one’s best efforts, Mandy and I staved off temporarily the kid’s desire for roughly 6 million different things, but mostly a plastic egg that, if the sticker on its shell is to be believed, contained a plush dinosaur for Arlie to immediately lose. Instead, we sated her longing for trinkets with a few of those teeth-cracking, brightly colored crystal-sugar-candy suckers you find within any rock-based attraction’s gift shop.
Several hours and one majestic cave tour later, we were back in the gift shop and listening to the familiar soundtrack of pleading.
“Can I get this stuffy? PleeeeeeeEEEEEEEEaaase?” our daughter whinnied, shoving a rainbow-colored plush dog … the perfect item to memorialize our journey through a hole in the ground … into our faces.
Despite my reluctance to let the kid collect a second stuffed animal on our weekend getaway, the thing was within the $10 limit we’d set for her. We relented.
Back at our rented cottage that night, the final of our trip, I asked Arlie about our short but full adventure.
“What was your favorite place we visited?” I wanted to know, my foolish parent-brain turning to thoughts of a child inspired by the experience of building a puppet at the Creative Discovery Museum, or lying on her back and watching stingrays swim over her head at the Tennessee Aquarium, or even staring up into the maw of a rock that was spewing water long before anyone we know had existed and will be still be spewing water long after everyone we will ever know is gone.
Arlie didn’t miss a beat.
“All the gift shops!”
ADAM ARMOUR is the news editor for the Daily Journal and former general manager of The Itawamba County Times. You may reach him via his Twitter handle, @admarmr.
News Editor
Adam is the news editor and writes a weekly feature column.
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