Abnormally Attracted to Bizarre

One person's gross is another person's history.

Or at least that's the premise of the new exhibit at the Virginia Historical Society. Bizarre Bits: Oddities from the Collection showcasing some of the weirder stuff that's been donated to the VHS for the sake of history and the pieces shown range from 'oh, interesting' to WTF?

For those enamored of body bits, there was s smallpox scab (framed!), an articulated brain for student use and a letter which enclosed the finger and toenail clippings of a Navy man out to sea and missing his wife, because, you know, nothing says 'I miss you, honey' like nail clippings.

For the morbid, there was a scarifier with thirteen retractable blades which made shallow cuts to draw blood without opening a large vein (it looked like a torture device to me), a hair wreath containing locks of hair from 125 friends and family members, and actual building nails from the collapse of the second floor of the State Capital (framed in a box, the nails spelled out NAILS; that alone was weird).

There were silhouette portraits cut by a woman born without arms who held the scissors in her teeth (I wish they'd had a picture of her doing that) and a letter from a husband home to a wife where she had blacked out the lines where he wrote graphically about them getting busy when he got back (apparently she was willing to do the deed but not have a paper trail).

And because this is Virginia, there was a pack of Junior Partner cigarettes, complete with a picture of a young boy contentedly holding a cigarette on the box.

But don't worry for the boy, the box informed that the cigs "will not injure your health in any way" and "contained no opium."

In other words, Good Housekeeping-approved and perfect to keep the little ones busy.

The exhibit is definitely worth a look-see for its sheer strangeness.

Where else are you going to see a piece of tree fungus carved into a likeness of R.E. Lee and Traveller?

You're not, I'm telling you, you're just not.

Which makes me wonder what bits of ephemera will be donated to the VHS to represent the 21st century.

I don't see how it could possibly be as fascinating as what I saw today.

Luckily it's not too late for us to get our weird on.