✅ My Sister's Problem

96. Day Trip

The twine museum was amazing. It started with a big exhibit about twine, thread, string, cord; the origins of so many words and the differences between them. I wasn't quite so irrationally exuberant when I arrived as I had been right after watching that hypnosis regression fil, but I was still enthusiastic about seeing all the things that I had missed last time.

I didn't have my mittens on this time, and I was allowed to pick things up. But Lindy insisted that as this was a punishment, I still shouldn't be free to do what I wanted. So we had agreed that I could have my hands free, so long as I wasn't allowed to play with my phone. And I knew that if my sister thought I was being too dextrous for a little baby, she could call for some extra punishment later. I didn't particularly mind that; it gave me a chance to play along with the role of a baby, grasping things clumsily because that was a part of the game, rather than a physical restraint.

After we passed through the big entrance hall, we were led into an area that looked hundreds of years old; there was dust in the air, and all the room's metalwork had surfaces rough with rust. I'd been amazed when I was younger about how old and beaten-up everything was. But now I was looking at it more carefully, I could see that this wasn't a room full of neglected factory machinery. This was stuff that had been stored, sometimes looked after and sometimes ignored. But it had also been restored by someone who cared a lot about the history, and who wanted to ensure that it looked its age. So the metal was carefully polished, adding shine to the patina rather than trying to hide it. It was clear that the people working here cared about the atmosphere, and the feel of a factory a hundred years ago as well as the actual equipment.

This room was very long. There were a set of rails running the length of the room, with lengths of rope strung along between two carriages at opposite ends. Each carriage had a complex mechanism of wheels and gears on, which caused various hooks to rotate relative to each other. And there was a man dressed up in some period costume, walking up and down the rails while sliding the rope through some kind of tool that could make it twist in the right way as the gears at each end turned. It was incredible the amount of effort he was putting in, and as a child I'd wondered why anybody would do that. But now, I tried to follow his hands as he worked, and the complexities of the gear setup, twisting all those separate pieces together into a single rope.

I still couldn't actually understand how the machine worked. But I was clearly smarter than I had been the last time I was here, because now I could see just how complex the process was. Now I knew that there was something I didn't know, which seemed to have completely passed me by when I was younger. And so now I could be excited to watch again, and not claim that I was bored by the simplicity of the show.

Branching off the ropewalk, there were entrances that led to all kinds of different exhibits. The signs around them all looked like the kind that would have pointed to different areas of the factory a hundred years ago, but the names were enigmatic and exciting. I could see how I would have found some of them boring when I was a kid, because I'd tried to pretend that this stuff held no more interest for me. But now I could allow myself to be excited, and I could see all of the things that I would have been embarrassed to be seen enjoying on our last visit. As weird as it seemed, the babyish outfit, and the stroller I was tightly strapped into, gave me a certain kind of freedom. They gave me an excuse not to keep pretending that I was a big girl, and a little excuse was all that I needed.

I turned to one of the doors and pointed. I could remember more clearly, now that I was here, the thoughts that had gone through my mind on our last visit. I'd seen the images on the posters about this place, making one of the exhibits seem like some kind of science fiction thing, with illustrations of strings in space, or made out of lasers or something. I'd been so curious, not knowing what they were talking about. But at the same time, someone at school had been saying I still acted like a kid, and I wasn't happy. I didn't even remember who'd said it now, so it couldn't have been a close friend. But the teasing had been an important thing to me back then, and somehow I'd wanted to show Lindy that I was a big girl now. It didn't make any sense in hindsight, but to the childish me it had been such a big decision.