I saw something today that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
When I was eleven years old, I would race home from school and finish up my homework, so that later in the evening I could watch whatever crime show was playing on CBS that evening—CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, the gamut. I was hooked on these shows, and even though my paranoid eleven-year-old mind was terrified of someone crawling into my bedroom window and slashing me to death, I couldn’t resist watching them.
In season seven of CSI, the team is chasing down a new, mystery murderer. After each homicide, the killer would recreate miniature models of the crime scene, and then leave them behind as clues for the detectives. I was enthralled with this, and for some reason, it has always stuck with me. I don’t remember many details of the hundreds of episodes of television I watched growing up, but I will probably never forget the miniature killer.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I am in Lyon, France. Early today, I went to the Musée Cinéma et Miniature, a collection of famous movie props, special effects exhibits, and—you guessed it—hyper-realistic miniature models.
While the life-size Gremlin and Chucky dolls were a lot of fun to see, it was the miniature models that blew me away the most. Uncle Ben’s rice boxes the size of a fingernail filled the shelves of a retro corner market; an entire opera theater, fitted within the size of a small window; a natural history museum full of dinosaur skeletons the size of a mouse. These are just a few examples of the unbelievable, meticulous detail that I observed with these models.
I could have stared at the miniatures for hours, absorbing every small detail, but I was distracted thinking about the way in which moments from our childhood return to us in new and different ways later in life. For example, I think today might have been the first time I saw a real miniature model the same way they were portrayed in the CSI episodes. I haven’t even thought about the CSI episodes in probably ten years, and yet, those memories rushed back to me as soon as I saw the miniatures today.
But isn’t that the way life works?
Things come, things go, things return, things leave forever. You never know when it might be the first or last time you do something. So along the way, soak up every detail, as if you’re about to go craft a miniature model of your life.
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I saw something today that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.
When I was eleven years old, I would race home from school and finish up my homework, so that later in the evening I could watch whatever crime show was playing on CBS that evening—CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, the gamut. I was hooked on these shows, and even though my paranoid eleven-year-old mind was terrified of someone crawling into my bedroom window and slashing me to death, I couldn’t resist watching them.
In season seven of CSI, the team is chasing down a new, mystery murderer. After each homicide, the killer would recreate miniature models of the crime scene, and then leave them behind as clues for the detectives. I was enthralled with this, and for some reason, it has always stuck with me. I don’t remember many details of the hundreds of episodes of television I watched growing up, but I will probably never forget the miniature killer.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I am in Lyon, France. Early today, I went to the Musée Cinéma et Miniature, a collection of famous movie props, special effects exhibits, and—you guessed it—hyper-realistic miniature models.
While the life-size Gremlin and Chucky dolls were a lot of fun to see, it was the miniature models that blew me away the most. Uncle Ben’s rice boxes the size of a fingernail filled the shelves of a retro corner market; an entire opera theater, fitted within the size of a small window; a natural history museum full of dinosaur skeletons the size of a mouse. These are just a few examples of the unbelievable, meticulous detail that I observed with these models.
I could have stared at the miniatures for hours, absorbing every small detail, but I was distracted thinking about the way in which moments from our childhood return to us in new and different ways later in life. For example, I think today might have been the first time I saw a real miniature model the same way they were portrayed in the CSI episodes. I haven’t even thought about the CSI episodes in probably ten years, and yet, those memories rushed back to me as soon as I saw the miniatures today.
But isn’t that the way life works?
Things come, things go, things return, things leave forever. You never know when it might be the first or last time you do something. So along the way, soak up every detail, as if you’re about to go craft a miniature model of your life.
