Last year, a friend and I visited a museum.

Being the only visitors in the cozy, industrial space, we had a private tour with a volunteer guide.

She greeted us enthusiastically.

“You’re in luck!” she said. She’s an avid fan of the museum – and a performer in a local theater. Her warm brown eyes danced with merriment, Santa-like.

“I’ll keep you entertained!” she said.

“This,” I thought to myself, “is going to be a good day.”

I tried to catch my friend’s eye. Did she sense what I sensed? That we were embarking on an adventure rivaled only by Bilbo’s?

She never looked my way, seemingly engrossed with our docent.

“Of course,” our guide raved, “I’m not as good as Margaret. You’ll have to come back when Margaret is here. Margaret,” she assured us, “is the best.”

I could hardly imagine a guide better than this petite dynamo standing before me. Margaret, I mused, must be positively celestial.

Our guide started the tour with an old, sepia-toned photo. She challenged us to surmise the significance of the photo. Her laugh lines smoothed as she gazed intently upon us.

I again tried catching my friend’s eye, but she was thoughtfully considering the picture.

I blurted my theory, as know-it-alls tend to do.

“You get it!” she beamed, holding her fist out for a bump.

It would be the first of many that afternoon.

Next, she asked for a volunteer. One of us was to act as a recent United States immigrant, a hundred years ago.

I looked at my friend.

She never turned from our guide as she explained my Anglophilia. “She,” my friend said, pointing at me, “would make an excellent immigrant.”

I would. I would make an excellent immigrant!

I was anointed in my role with the fanfare of King Charles III bestowing knighthood. Our guide’s dress swirled as she directed me to my mark.

I was ready to take her home with me.

Our tour continued in spectacular fashion. I don’t know that I had an opinion on the museum’s subject matter before that tour, but I sure have one now.

“Guess what this was used for,” our guide said, holding an object aloft. “Go ahead. Guess. You’ll never get it!” she beamed. “I’ll tell you!” She quivered like a guitar string as she explained the magic of the relic in her hands.

We were frequently encouraged, throughout the tour, to return when the storied Margaret was on duty. Margaret, she reiterated, “is so much better.”

“Who is this Margaret!?” I wondered.

We settled into soft gray chairs for a documentary. Our guide excused herself as the DVD player whirred, a mellifluous narrator weaving the story of the museum.

I glanced at my friend, but she again missed it.

As the film concluded, our guide settled into a chair next to me. “Did you figure it out? Who the narrator is?” she asked.

My friend sat quietly, eyes flicking between the documentary and our guide.

She was positively impish in both size and demeanor, our guide. And it was contagious. The museum felt enchanted, like a Hobbit hole. And we were the dwarfs, soaking up all the hospitality.

I had an urge to tell Margaret she could suck it. I imagined Margaret waltzing through the museum, explaining her greatness to everyone within earshot.

A blowhard. That’s what I decided about Margaret. She’s a blowhard. How could Margaret be any better than our gamine guide?

“Was it you?” I asked. “Did you narrate the documentary?”

Our guide’s eyes lit up. I was right!

“No!” she said. “It was Margaret! I could never be as good as Margaret,” she said, her voice infused with genuine awe.

I beg to differ.

As we left the museum, I turned to my friend. “Who is this Margaret?” I asked.

“Right?!” my friend said. “I can’t even begin to imagine a Margaret tour.”

“Maybe Margaret doesn’t exist,” my husband said as I recounted my tale later. “Maybe she’s like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.”

Months later, my friend and I were out with our husbands. To my surprise, my friend never said anything about our adventure. The story spilled out of me. Like The Hobbit, which was three movies by way of one book, my story was longer than our tour.

“And she never looked at me. Not once!” I said of my friend. “I couldn’t believe this was happening and I was trying to catch her eye. But she never looked at me!”

“Yeah,” her husband said. “She’s like that. She let you answer all the questions, right? She’s like that.” His eyes danced with almost as much humor as our impish guide.

Maybe – maybe they were all Tyler Durden. Our guide. My friend. Her husband.

Margaret.

And now I kind of think the whole thing never happened.