Do Not Touch

You know that moment when the alarm goes off in the museum?

- Stefanie Hauger

Everyone looks around at each other sinlessly and rolls their eyes in stratospherically superior intelligence compared to the, as yet unidentified, perpetrator. Loud disapproving tuts are clacked by a number of tongues to make it abundantly clear that their owners didn’t set off that beastly noise, but obviously the tip of some other idiot’s nose crossed the invisible laser beams woven across van Gogh’s priceless (actually incalculably valuable) ‘Starry Night’.

‘The Nincompoop in the Room’ jerks back in terror and goes puce, uttering a barely intelligible “terribly sorry” (or possibly an expletive) to anyone who is not already actively avoiding eye contact with the philistine. Except, of course, the still statue of a security guard who has been waiting with quiet anticipation for this moment in his otherwise nauseatingly dull 8-hour shift.

Our humble, saintly-patient guard is subjected to a life of watching self-proclaimed art experts amble (or disrespectful, unseasoned youths screech) past him, either not noticing him or not acknowledging his existence. Art connoisseurs’ hands are loosely clasped behind their backs in classic (absolutely expected in certain academic circles) ‘museum-gait’, clenching exhibition leaflets or spectacles between their twitchy fingers, their noses ever so slightly turned up in readiness simply to verify on the next label what they already knew (of course).