The Intern

I was exhausted this Monday. NTB, but we had a big weekend around here. Friday night was my cooking class. Saturday was action packed: up early with the Bubby, big trip to the carpet store, taking the bubby to our neighborhood festival (he was so cute enjoying the airwalk maze and a strawberry/banana smoothie), and then . . . the White Sox game to celebrate our friend's finally being finished with medical school, residency, and fellowship. My husband even stayed out after the game to get a few more beers. Sunday was golf for him, the neighborhood festival for me and the bubby (pineapple smoothie this time), and then a barbecue in the suburbs. Now, even though this was a "big" weekend for us, the latest I was out all weekend was 10:30 and my husband was home by midnight. Certainly not a wild a weekend by any account, but we were kind of pleased with ourselves for packing so much social interaction into one weekend (since we often spend weekend nights scanning pay-per-view options and wishing we had managed our Blockbuster online queue better).

There are two twenty one year old boys living in our basement this summer: a brother and a nephew. They have big weekends (and sometimes weeknights) all the time. They scout out beer specials*, go see bands, attend "afterparties," eat hot dogs and cheese fries in the early morning hours, and sleep very late the next day. Case in point, my brother began his day on Saturday around 1:30 p.m. On Sunday, he did not surface until about 2:30 or so.

"So, what did you do last night?" I asked him as he lowered himself on to the couch. He started the night with some college friends who were in town. At some point (he can't say when for sure, but definitely after midnight), they headed to a bar in Lincoln Park where my brother then sees some friends of me and my husband (he has only met them a couple of time at most; one of them was at the Sox game with us earlier and for beers with my husband). My brother then proceeds to hang out with them for several more hours and other bars (but again, he's fuzzy on the details). Our friends took to calling my brother "the intern" and then treating him like an intern. For example, if they saw an attractive young woman, the intern was tasked with getting her name and number. My brother apparently took to using lines like, "Hey, I'm just the intern. I hope you can help me out. I really don't want to get fired." Apparently, complete strangers were chanting "intern, intern, intern" when he walked past. The intern shared a taxi home with one of our friends. It was already light out when he got home.

This is probably a story that is funnier if the intern is actually telling it and if you know the people with whom he was out. Nevertheless, it put our notion of a big weekend in perspective.


*when the boys first talked about bars with beer specials, my husband started speaking with authority about various bars and their nightly specials, which was hilarious because he was using information that was like five years old!