Mark sticks his Bigfoot in his mouth

I love a good roadside attraction/oddity, and I appreciate any kind of eclectic museum, especially one run by an equally eccentric proprietor. So when my brother Tim suggested a visit to the Bigfoot Museum in Santa Cruz, I was all over it.

Let me preface this by saying it wasn't the first visit for Tim's family. They are huge fans of the cable TV show "Finding Bigfoot," and know an alarming amount of Sasquatch facts. Tim dropped the phrase "the Patterson-Gimlin film" into conversation numerous times, as though I knew what that meant.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I finally admitted.

"The famous film," he sighed. "The one of Bigfoot walking."

I began to worry about my brother.

I also worried about my nephew, Nic, when he demonstrated how Sasquatches communicate with each other by pounding a giant branch on a tree.

"The Sasquatches always answer back on the show," my niece Hannah said, matter-of-factly.

The "museum" was the size of my bedroom, and U-shaped. We entered one side of the room, then turned a wall and walk back down the other side, where the "curator" stood, eagerly waiting to discuss Bigfoot with us.

The place was AWESOME--every inch was covered with photos, newspaper clippings, magazine covers, action figures. If it was about Bigfoot, it was here. You could even buy giant plaster Bigfoot footprints for $25.

A giant stuffed Bigfoot was propped up on the floor, and I made Hannah sit and take photos with it. We were still giggling with the stuffed 'Squatch when everyone else went into the second room.

From our room, I heard the curator talking to Mark. He asked a question, and Mark answered, "I don't know," in a guilty tone, which was apparently the wrong answer. The curator scolded him, saying "That's the difference between science and faith."

When I turned the corner, Nic was deeply engrossed in the Patterson-Gimlin film, watching an endless loop of Bigfoot walking. Kim was staring at the wall, and Tim was hiding behind the corner, entranced by a huge map. Mark stood in the middle of the room, looking lost.

I smiled at the old coot curator leaning on the counter. He looked like an old-time miner, with a white beard, plaid shirt and suspenders. He was still talking, loudly and kind of angry. I listened for a moment, but was totally distracted by the weird vibe in the room. No one was talking back to the curator, or asking questions--and this group is usually FULL of questions.

I looked at my family members--I wasn't imagining it, they were all avoiding eye contact with the old coot.

I realized they were totally ignoring the crazy guy, which surprised me. We hadn't just stumbled upon this place accidentally; we'd come here on purpose, specifically to embrace the crazy. And now they were ignoring it?

I waited a couple minutes, until I couldn't take it anymore. I broke the uncomfortable silence, asking the difference between a Sasquatch and Bigfoot.

"Bigfoot is just a nickname for the Sasquatches," the curator said gruffly, like I was an idiot. "Sasquatches aren't animals, they're feral humans. And when the government realizes that, they won't bestow an endangered species status on them, they'll have to give them what the rest of us already have as humans: Constitutional rights."

And...action! Game on! This was what'd I'd come for--conspiracy theories and feral humans! I glanced at Tim with a twinkle in my eye, but he looked away, absorbed in the giant wall map.

Seriously? I thought. No reaction to FERAL HUMANS?? 

No one else reacted, either. Clearly, I was on my own here.

"Ummm...is there more than one Bigfoot?" I asked. (Yes, my questions were lame, but I hadn't planned on carrying the whole conversation myself!)

"Well, duh, YEAH," the curator scoffed. "They have parents--of course there's more than one, or how else are they gonna breed? If there was just one, they'd die out!"

He sighed at my stupidity. Then he regaled us with tales of his recent trip north, which someone had sponsored.

"They paid for my rental car and gas," he said, proudly, as though being sponsored made the research legitimate.

Again, I looked to Tim, but still, no reaction. ("I wanna sponsor an expedition," I told Tim later. "What'll that cost, like a hundred bucks? I'll rent him a car, then I'll have bragging rights forever--remember the time I sponsored a Bigfoot research trip?")

The conversation lulled and died again.

"Um...what do they eat?" I asked. Obviously, no one else was gonna jump in here.

"Sasquatches hide in the forest, out of sight," the curator said, ignoring my question. "But builders have seen them. The 'Squatches come into their camps and break the levers on their tractors and their equipment, so they can't do any work."

Mischievous feral humans breaking stuff--I glanced around again, pleading, but no one would take the crazy bait.

The curator proclaimed that a famous researcher, Melba Ketchum, just finished years of DNA testing and concluded that Sasquatches are, indeed, real and part human (and part FERAL!).

"She found human DNA," he said. "She's going to release her findings soon. She already put something on Facebook about it, but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet."

("He didn't have time?" Tim said, later. "What else does he have to do??"")

And then, suddenly, unknowingly, Tim broke the spell. He said the magic words, "that show, Finding Bigfoot," and the curator immediately thawed, dropping his attitude and warming his tone.

"I know those guys," he said. "We go on research expeditions together." He pulled out an autographed postcard of the cast, and Hannah appeared out of nowhere to admire it.

"Hannah loves Bobo," Tim said, and though I had no idea what that meant, the curator did, and laughed. (Bobo's one of the stars on the show, and one of the curator's friends.)

And that's all it took. The weird vibe immediately disappeared. The curator lost his haughty tone. Tim asked about the wolf pictures scattered about, and the curator explained that Sasquatches fed the wolves who followed them.

"That's actually how humans domesticated dogs as companions," Tim said, and suddenly, they were best friends.

I just stared at Tim. I wasn't sure where this guy had been, but I'd been waiting for him!

When we left 15 minutes later, everyone was fast friends. I bought a magnet, we said goodbye, and I stopped to take a picture comparing the size of my foot with Bigfoot's.

But when I got to the mini-van, the whole family was yelling and laughing at the same time. Mark was apologizing, somewhat defensively, and kept repeating, "Well, how was I supposed to know??"

Turns out Mark, the boy with no filters, walked into the second room, watched approximately three seconds of the famous Bigfoot film and yelled out, "It's just a guy in a suit!"

To which the curator--the man who has dedicated his life, his vacations and and his museum to showcasing Bigfoot--lost it, and launched into a defensive tirade about how Sasquatches are real, and not a hoax.

"Mark opened his big mouth, and the rest of us got an angry lecture for the next half hour," Tim said. "That's why we were ignoring him. You totally missed the whole thing!"

I burst into laughter--now it all made sense! The carefully averted eyes, the uncomfortable silence...and I was not at all shocked that my dear, beloved son was the cause of it.

"Nice," I told Mark. "Maybe next year we'll go to Roswell, and you can tell them aliens aren't real, either."

It was totally a case of the emperor not wearing any clothes. OF COURSE the rest of us thought it was just a guy in a suit, but no one else actually SAID IT OUT LOUD. Even Nic and Hannah knew not to poke the bear (or feral human?), especially in his own museum. But apparently, we forgot to warn Mark.

Even Nic, who's the same age as Mark, knew better. He said, "In our minds, we all screamed" when Mark blurted that out. Even Nic knew that would enrage the old coot.

And so, unbeknownst to me or Hannah, they all got an extra special lecture courtesy of Mark's sassy mouth.

"This is one of those stories that was miserable to live through," Tim said. ""I wanted to punch Mark in the head so hard! But now, I'm gonna laugh about it forever." 

And that's exactly what we did--we laughed about it all that day, all that night, and for the rest of the weekend. We haven't stopped laughing about it yet.

It pretty much amused all of us to no end--amused everybody except the old coot running the museum. Turns out, he doesn't find Mark nearly as funny as we do.

Oh, and two days after we got home, I saw this on msnbc.com! I sent it to Tim, who was really impressed and said, "And you heard it first at the Bigfoot museum!!!" I can only wonder what other priceless secrets we might've learned had Mark kept his mouth shut...