A Young Author's Agitation

My sixth grade teacher always made us write stories, and it was always difficult for me to come up with good topics. One day, a new kid showed up in class and everyone made fun of her because she had a really long last name. This gave me the inspiration to write a little story about the stupid kids in my class and how the new kid would eventually fit in after a certain amount of time. The story was set during the night time hours at a museum. All of the the exhibits came to life after the museum closed, and I got that idea from that show "Today's Special."

The T-Rex and the medieval weapons led the tirade against the newest exhibit in the museum, a recently discovered fossil with a very long name, and eventually grew to accept the fossil as a fellow museum exhibit. My story didn't impress my teacher because it had no climax. He didn't understand that I was trying to demonstrate how difficult it is to be the new person, and he gave me a check minus.

Fifteen years later, I am sitting on my sofa and a commercial for the new holiday movie "A Night at the Museum" comes on. You can imagine how intrigued I was to see various museum exhibits coming to life after the museum closed. I really can't be that upset because it's not like someone copied every detail of my story. I didn't have any human exhibits in my story, for example. I'm just saying that the similarities are uncanny!

If you see any movies with the following topics, please let me know so I can figure out who's been selling my elementary school stories to Hollywood producers:

• A rabbit eats too many carrots and gets a stomach ache because his mother told him not to eat so many.

• A kid who accidentally summons the spirit of the headless horseman on Halloween is forced to ask his creepy teacher for help in banishing it before his mother gets home from work.

• A surly elderly woman gets her comeuppance when she pisses off the entire town. They hang her from a tree with her knitting.