CoD Chapter Two
Chapter 2
Scenes from an Internship
He’s really early that first morning; he ends up waiting around in the empty lobby of the building for nearly a half hour. Which, honestly, is a huge relief after his first encounter with DC’s metro system. The press of people in the train was like trying to get through a mob of fans but instead of tiny girls it was surly people in suits. The girls smelled a lot better too.
The Hart Senate office building [i] is distinctly different to the other offices he walked by on Capitol Hill. Instead of columns and grandeur, it looks like it was built in the 1970s. The most impressive aspect is the huge metal sculpture in the atrium. It is made up of giant black triangles and arches with large black panels hanging from the ceiling above. He is currently standing under it, head tilted back, staring up towards the ceiling. He nearly bashes his head against the side of it when someone speaks up from behind him.
“What?” he asks when his heart is no longer in his throat.
“Sorry, man. I was just saying that it’s called Mountains and Clouds [ii],” the guy behind him gestures up at the huge sculpture. “Do you work here? I’m starting an internship today.”
“Uh, no. Well, I start today, too”.
“Nice, come on. It will seem less weird if we wander around lost together.”
So he and unnamed intern wander around until they find a directory. It is still only a quarter after 8am and the building is desolate. The directory sends them to different floors and they split on the elevator wishing each other good luck. Nick kind of wishes he lived with that guy. He seemed polite and was punctual.
He’s outside the door now that reads Senator John Cornyn. It’s locked so he stands around awkwardly, hands in his pockets until a smart-dressed woman shows up at 8:45 and unlocks the doors. She’s clearly surprised to find him there already, the reason for which becomes obvious as the morning drags on and new interns continue to trickle in until nearly 11:00am. It’s day one, and he’s already managed to label himself as the overachiever. He’s pretty pleased about it.
By late morning the group of interns has gathered in a meeting room in the Senator’s set of offices. There are multiple offices and meeting rooms in every Senator’s office complex. In total, Senator Cornyn has about 40 staffers and today they add eight new free laborers. Nick has introduced himself to all of them, but can’t really remember any names. Several had clearly recognized him, but they were all polite and professional. The clear stand out of the group is a girl who is dressed so inappropriately that he is surprised they haven’t sent her home. The others had whipped around to stare at her as she walked in wearing a tiny pencil skirt, stilettos, and a pink halter-top. He was beginning to realize that this was a real mixed bag of people.
And so began day one of his really long road to the White House-Capitol tour guide training. Access badges. Learning to fax, copy, and mail merge. Running errands. Sorting mail. Answering phones. And more bizarre jargon than he knew what to do with. As the days blurred passed, things settled into a methodical routine.
******
Week 1
On Thursday morning Nick is working on writing a letter for a constituent while the other intern he shares a desk with is giving a tour of the Capitol. When he gets an email telling him to come to the front desk immediately, he has a little panic attack. What had he done? So he saves his form letter on giving tax credits to users of renewable energy and heads up front.
Several staffers are standing around the desk and they all turn to smirk at him as he enters the room. As they move aside, a vase of red roses and a gift bag is revealed. Oh God, he thinks, how did fans already find me? Red faced, he takes the vase and walks back towards the interns’ office as someone catcalls behind his back.
“Real professional”, he mutters to himself.
He's the only one in the office right now so he sets the roses on a file cabinet but opens the gift bag. He's expecting a stuffed animal or diet cokes or a picture of himself with some fan so when he pulls out a book he's taken back. It's called The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. [iii] He’s floored. There is no way a fan sent this. He digs into the tissue paper trying to find a card. The outside of the card says “Merry Christmas”. Seriously, what is this? He opens the card and it suddenly makes perfect sense. Well, Joe-sense at least. He’s blushing again and his stomach flutters against his will. On the inside under the “Our Savior is Born” and a picture of a manger, Joe has written
NICKY!!!
Just wanted to send you some inspiration. Maybe help you to get a little crazy out there. I miss you so much man, but I know you are totally doing amazing. Kiss hands and shake some babies, dude.
Love you, Joe
He knows he has a stupid smile on his face, but when the others return to the office and see the roses he plays it off as a joke (which Joe surely meant it as). He doesn’t quite manage to not sound wistful.
Week 2
The tasks he has been assigned as an intern are not exactly glamorous. In fact they are really dull. He runs a lot of errands, answers a lot of phones, and writes letters that sound really important but don’t really say anything substantive. By far his least favorite task is giving tours of the U.S. Capitol. The others love it; they’re always thrilled to take their turn showing tourists around.
For Nick the tours are the time when he is most likely to get recognized by kids on vacation with their families. But that’s just the beginning of his grief concerning the tourist guide gig.
First, there is just dealing with the tourists. There are professional tour guides at the Capitol, too. They take huge groups of people and use headsets to direct them around. The place is constantly packed, people stop on staircases and in doorways to gawk at statues and paintings, and someone is always falling behind. The tours that Nick and the interns give are more exclusive. They are families or small groups, usually less than a dozen. They are people who merit some form of special consideration from the Senator, and that makes them entitled and difficult.
What he really hates about giving a tour, though, is the insane amount of information you have to know and all the unpredictable questions that get asked. He’ll fume for an entire afternoon over not being able to answer a question a guy wearing a fanny-pack asked of him. He finds it truly shaming to be asked questions that he doesn’t know the answers to.
And it’s not like he didn’t read the little guidebook that he was given (he even made flashcards to quiz himself). It’s just that there is a lot of stuff in the Capitol, and a lot of history has happened there, and a lot of people have served in Congress. How is he supposed to know what year the statue of George Shoup, Idaho’s first Governor, was installed?
The other interns get a real kick out of it though. They brag to each other about the stories they make up and sell to the tour groups. They are always trying to up each other by telling a more ludicrous story without anyone questioning it. Nick knows he could never pull that off, not only is he a terrible liar, but he wouldn’t be able to tolerate not giving the best tour he can.
But when he tells Joe about it, he thinks it is hilarious. He starts texting Nick with all kinds of stupid ideas for stories to tell on the tours.
So on Tuesday morning before he is set to give an afternoon tour Joe sends him a message that reads--Take then to some random little room and tell them that this is where a Sen. kept his pet pig!
It’s so stupid, and he tells Joe so. But Joe just keeps texting him a stream of
Please
Please
Please
Come on Nicky!
And that’s how he ends up opening a random door outside the old House chambers and explaining the story of a Senator that kept his pet hog in there (which he later will realize makes no sense because they aren’t even in the Senate chambers!). And that’s also how he ends up wanting to throw himself down the Capitol steps when a man in front clears his throat and says,
“Isn’t this the former Speaker’s office? With the couch President John Quincy Adams died on after his stroke?” [iv]
Week 3
After receiving Joe’s gift, Nick had been terrified of receiving more gifts at the Senator’s office. It would surely only be a matter of time before others found out how to send him things. What he hadn’t expected though was the phone calls.
Taking phone calls for the Senator’s office can be pretty entertaining; it can also be really sad. When you answer you never really know what to expect. Maybe it is a person calling to scream at you about the national debt or funding of Planned Parenthood. The staff have instructed them to always be polite and sympathetic, but ready to transfer someone to the Capitol Police if necessary. In general, he just hears a lot of rants about issues he knows nothing about. He says a lot of
“I will make a note of that for the Senator.”
“The Senator believes that…”
“The Senator will look into that issue.”
“I appreciate you brining this to the Senator’s attention.”
The calls that are more difficult are the ones where people are asking for help. These kinds of requests are called casework. He honestly had had no idea that politicians helped people like that. There are specific staffers that do just casework, but the interns generally take the initial call and help with completing the case.
Every Senator does casework, but some value it a lot more than others. From listening to his roommates talk, he seems to be in an office that is about middle of the road on valuing casework. Still, the staff’s dedication to accomplishing it doesn’t stop the calls.
He gets all kinds of requests. Some are desperate (“I’m losing my house and the bank refuses to compromise.” “My husband has cancer and our insurance doesn’t cover the new treatment.”), some are bizarre (“The prison I’m in just replaced all the porcelain toilets with metal ones. It’s a huge waste of government money. You should investigate.” “The grass on the highway median is too tall. Can you get someone to cut it?”), and some are easy to fulfill (“My wife just had a baby, will the Senator send her a congratulations card?” “My son wants to go to WestPoint. Will the Senator sponsor him?”). All in all, he really enjoys answering the phones and helping people out. It’s fulfilling in a way he’s never experienced before. That all ends with the first fan-call.
It really was only a matter of time before fans figured out where he was and how to reach him. Jonas fans are nothing if not dedicated and resourceful. Joe once received a birthday cake (an ice-cream cake!) in the mail, so calling a publicly listed number to find him is no real challenge.
The first time a fan calls it’s the beginning of his third week in the office, and he and two other interns are on phone duty. He’s just finished a call with a woman in Austin when the guy next to him turns towards him with a puzzled expression.
“Uh yes,” the other intern says into the phone. “He’s right here.” And he hands the receiver to Nick with a shrug.
Nick honestly doesn’t think much of it. Maybe it’s a caller he talked with earlier checking back in? So when he says “Hello. This is Nick Jonas,” he nearly falls out of his seat when the caller screams in his ear. Everyone around him can clearly hear it too, and all eyes turn his way. He panics and slams the phone down, which they are never supposed to do.
“Uh? This might be a problem.”
It’s definitely a problem. Within days he is off phone duty indefinitely. That doesn’t stop the calls or the dirty looks the others give him as they deal with the fan calls.
So when early next week he’s writing letters and the girl behind him has fielded at least six fan calls in the last hour he turns to apologize. She’s the scantily dressed girl from the first day (though no longer scantily dressed whether by public shaming or a talking to by staff, he doesn’t know).
“I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that. If I could stop it, I would.” There really is no recourse. Recognizing it on Twitter or Facebook and requesting they stop would only draw more attention. And unlike a private individual, the Senator can’t just change his number.
“It’s cool. Actually, I really like it.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Just relieves stress. Like yesterday, I convinced a girl to wait on hold for nearly three hours. I kept checking in to tell her you were in a meeting. Oh, and Devin nearly made some girl cry yesterday when he told them that calling here in a non-emergency was a crime-like 911!”
He has no idea what to say.
“It’s just too bad you’re banned from the phones. You’d probably get the biggest kick out of messing with them.”
Week 4
He goes out to lunch a lot. The staffers take them, or a lobbyist, or someone visiting from Texas. Once, in the first week, the Senator took them all to lunch. It was pretty embarrassing to watch everyone fall over themselves to impress him or engage him in conversation.
Today, he’s going out with the four other male interns in the office and two of their intern buddies from the office next door. It’s the first time he has accepted an offer from the group of guys to go to lunch. Usually, he just claims he’s too busy and shuffles some papers around.
They end up at a pub style place on the Hill and are seated at a large, round table in the middle of the restaurant. The guy next to him immediately picks up the drink menu. Then, he determinedly looks up towards the rest of the table.
“Are you guys going to drink?”
The assortment of guys around the table make vague sounds and someone mutters that it’s only 11:30am. Nick stays silent.
“No seriously. I want a beer, but I’m not twenty-one. If we all order together no one will probably check our IDs.”
Nick’s not sure it will work like that, but this guy probably should have interned for a lobbying firm because he coerces agreement out of the group. Nick still mutters a quiet “Diet Coke” when asked what he wants, however.
The waiter scribbles on his notepad and then looks up. “Can I see some IDs?” He doesn’t say it accusingly or anything, and no one reaches for their wallets. All eyes turn to the guy sitting next to Nick. He flushes a little, but turns to the waiter.
“Come on man. Our wallets are all buried at the bottom of our bags.” The waiter suddenly looks dubious.
“Sorry, we card anyone who looks under thirty-five.”
What happens next is undoubtedly one of the most embarrassing situations he has ever been involved in. And that is saying a lot because he has popped a boner on stage in front of thousands of people.
The intern visibly straightens his posture and flashes his red Congressional Intern ID badge [v] at the waiter and says condescendingly “Listen, you don't need to see our ID's. We work for Senator Cornyn.”
“Well, unless the Distinguished Gentleman from Texas is willing to invoke his oversight authority to make the fine that we'd get slapped with disappear; I'm still going to have to see them.”
"Oversight authority, huh?” the intern mocks. “That's more knowledge than I'd expect from someone with your job.”
“And this is about as much stupidity as I'd expect from someone who agreed to lick envelopes for free.”
And they sit there in silence until the waiter finally walks off to the kitchen.
Nick is definitely busy the next time he gets invited to lunch.
Week 5
The American History Museum has a lot of random crap in it, Nick thinks. There are Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, Julia Child’s entire kitchen, the original Stars and Stripes flag, and a giant statue of George Washington dressed like Zeus to name a very few of the items on display. Nick is there for one specific reason-“The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, 3rd Floor East”. [vi]
He wanders past a long wall with a timeline of the presidents, and stops in front of an unusually short section in the timeline to examine the anomaly. Apparently, William Henry Harrison served only one month in office after catching pneumonia at his outdoor inauguration. God, that would have really sucked, he thinks. I’m definitely having an indoor party.
He moves quickly through a lot of the displays, but gets stuck in the section on life in the White House. He’s intrigued by all the toys and children’s belongings behind the glass. He definitely had an unusual adolescence, but the idea of being the child of the President is amazing. He tries to imagine it as he passes Chelsea Clinton’s ballet slippers and a lovely, blue dollhouse that belonged to the children of Grover Cleveland.
And then, in front of him is Clinton’s saxophone, and suddenly he is hit with the image of one of his guitars on display right beside it. He leaves the museum in a daze. Next
[i]The Office where Nick is working http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/visiting/d_three_sections_with_teasers/hart_senate_building_web_page.htm
[ii]The coolest art in the Congressional office buildings http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/artifact/Sculpture_25_00007.htm
[iii]This seems like a book Nick should own http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/161039044X
[iv] This room used to be the Speaker’s office and famously was where a President died after a stroke. Now it’s a reading room, kinda odd. http://artandhistory.house.gov/art_artifacts/boggs-reading-room/index.aspx
[v] Congressional interns are hilarious, just fyi http://voices.washingtonpost.com/campus-overload/2010/05/that_intern_the_omg-look-at-my.html
[vi]This is my favorite exhibit in all of the Smithsonians. I hope Nick has had or will have a chance to check it out. http://americanhistory.si.edu/presidency/home.html
Scenes from an Internship
He’s really early that first morning; he ends up waiting around in the empty lobby of the building for nearly a half hour. Which, honestly, is a huge relief after his first encounter with DC’s metro system. The press of people in the train was like trying to get through a mob of fans but instead of tiny girls it was surly people in suits. The girls smelled a lot better too.
The Hart Senate office building [i] is distinctly different to the other offices he walked by on Capitol Hill. Instead of columns and grandeur, it looks like it was built in the 1970s. The most impressive aspect is the huge metal sculpture in the atrium. It is made up of giant black triangles and arches with large black panels hanging from the ceiling above. He is currently standing under it, head tilted back, staring up towards the ceiling. He nearly bashes his head against the side of it when someone speaks up from behind him.
“What?” he asks when his heart is no longer in his throat.
“Sorry, man. I was just saying that it’s called Mountains and Clouds [ii],” the guy behind him gestures up at the huge sculpture. “Do you work here? I’m starting an internship today.”
“Uh, no. Well, I start today, too”.
“Nice, come on. It will seem less weird if we wander around lost together.”
So he and unnamed intern wander around until they find a directory. It is still only a quarter after 8am and the building is desolate. The directory sends them to different floors and they split on the elevator wishing each other good luck. Nick kind of wishes he lived with that guy. He seemed polite and was punctual.
He’s outside the door now that reads Senator John Cornyn. It’s locked so he stands around awkwardly, hands in his pockets until a smart-dressed woman shows up at 8:45 and unlocks the doors. She’s clearly surprised to find him there already, the reason for which becomes obvious as the morning drags on and new interns continue to trickle in until nearly 11:00am. It’s day one, and he’s already managed to label himself as the overachiever. He’s pretty pleased about it.
By late morning the group of interns has gathered in a meeting room in the Senator’s set of offices. There are multiple offices and meeting rooms in every Senator’s office complex. In total, Senator Cornyn has about 40 staffers and today they add eight new free laborers. Nick has introduced himself to all of them, but can’t really remember any names. Several had clearly recognized him, but they were all polite and professional. The clear stand out of the group is a girl who is dressed so inappropriately that he is surprised they haven’t sent her home. The others had whipped around to stare at her as she walked in wearing a tiny pencil skirt, stilettos, and a pink halter-top. He was beginning to realize that this was a real mixed bag of people.
And so began day one of his really long road to the White House-Capitol tour guide training. Access badges. Learning to fax, copy, and mail merge. Running errands. Sorting mail. Answering phones. And more bizarre jargon than he knew what to do with. As the days blurred passed, things settled into a methodical routine.
******
Week 1
On Thursday morning Nick is working on writing a letter for a constituent while the other intern he shares a desk with is giving a tour of the Capitol. When he gets an email telling him to come to the front desk immediately, he has a little panic attack. What had he done? So he saves his form letter on giving tax credits to users of renewable energy and heads up front.
Several staffers are standing around the desk and they all turn to smirk at him as he enters the room. As they move aside, a vase of red roses and a gift bag is revealed. Oh God, he thinks, how did fans already find me? Red faced, he takes the vase and walks back towards the interns’ office as someone catcalls behind his back.
“Real professional”, he mutters to himself.
He's the only one in the office right now so he sets the roses on a file cabinet but opens the gift bag. He's expecting a stuffed animal or diet cokes or a picture of himself with some fan so when he pulls out a book he's taken back. It's called The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. [iii] He’s floored. There is no way a fan sent this. He digs into the tissue paper trying to find a card. The outside of the card says “Merry Christmas”. Seriously, what is this? He opens the card and it suddenly makes perfect sense. Well, Joe-sense at least. He’s blushing again and his stomach flutters against his will. On the inside under the “Our Savior is Born” and a picture of a manger, Joe has written
NICKY!!!
Just wanted to send you some inspiration. Maybe help you to get a little crazy out there. I miss you so much man, but I know you are totally doing amazing. Kiss hands and shake some babies, dude.
Love you, Joe
He knows he has a stupid smile on his face, but when the others return to the office and see the roses he plays it off as a joke (which Joe surely meant it as). He doesn’t quite manage to not sound wistful.
Week 2
The tasks he has been assigned as an intern are not exactly glamorous. In fact they are really dull. He runs a lot of errands, answers a lot of phones, and writes letters that sound really important but don’t really say anything substantive. By far his least favorite task is giving tours of the U.S. Capitol. The others love it; they’re always thrilled to take their turn showing tourists around.
For Nick the tours are the time when he is most likely to get recognized by kids on vacation with their families. But that’s just the beginning of his grief concerning the tourist guide gig.
First, there is just dealing with the tourists. There are professional tour guides at the Capitol, too. They take huge groups of people and use headsets to direct them around. The place is constantly packed, people stop on staircases and in doorways to gawk at statues and paintings, and someone is always falling behind. The tours that Nick and the interns give are more exclusive. They are families or small groups, usually less than a dozen. They are people who merit some form of special consideration from the Senator, and that makes them entitled and difficult.
What he really hates about giving a tour, though, is the insane amount of information you have to know and all the unpredictable questions that get asked. He’ll fume for an entire afternoon over not being able to answer a question a guy wearing a fanny-pack asked of him. He finds it truly shaming to be asked questions that he doesn’t know the answers to.
And it’s not like he didn’t read the little guidebook that he was given (he even made flashcards to quiz himself). It’s just that there is a lot of stuff in the Capitol, and a lot of history has happened there, and a lot of people have served in Congress. How is he supposed to know what year the statue of George Shoup, Idaho’s first Governor, was installed?
The other interns get a real kick out of it though. They brag to each other about the stories they make up and sell to the tour groups. They are always trying to up each other by telling a more ludicrous story without anyone questioning it. Nick knows he could never pull that off, not only is he a terrible liar, but he wouldn’t be able to tolerate not giving the best tour he can.
But when he tells Joe about it, he thinks it is hilarious. He starts texting Nick with all kinds of stupid ideas for stories to tell on the tours.
So on Tuesday morning before he is set to give an afternoon tour Joe sends him a message that reads--Take then to some random little room and tell them that this is where a Sen. kept his pet pig!
It’s so stupid, and he tells Joe so. But Joe just keeps texting him a stream of
Please
Please
Please
Come on Nicky!
And that’s how he ends up opening a random door outside the old House chambers and explaining the story of a Senator that kept his pet hog in there (which he later will realize makes no sense because they aren’t even in the Senate chambers!). And that’s also how he ends up wanting to throw himself down the Capitol steps when a man in front clears his throat and says,
“Isn’t this the former Speaker’s office? With the couch President John Quincy Adams died on after his stroke?” [iv]
Week 3
After receiving Joe’s gift, Nick had been terrified of receiving more gifts at the Senator’s office. It would surely only be a matter of time before others found out how to send him things. What he hadn’t expected though was the phone calls.
Taking phone calls for the Senator’s office can be pretty entertaining; it can also be really sad. When you answer you never really know what to expect. Maybe it is a person calling to scream at you about the national debt or funding of Planned Parenthood. The staff have instructed them to always be polite and sympathetic, but ready to transfer someone to the Capitol Police if necessary. In general, he just hears a lot of rants about issues he knows nothing about. He says a lot of
“I will make a note of that for the Senator.”
“The Senator believes that…”
“The Senator will look into that issue.”
“I appreciate you brining this to the Senator’s attention.”
The calls that are more difficult are the ones where people are asking for help. These kinds of requests are called casework. He honestly had had no idea that politicians helped people like that. There are specific staffers that do just casework, but the interns generally take the initial call and help with completing the case.
Every Senator does casework, but some value it a lot more than others. From listening to his roommates talk, he seems to be in an office that is about middle of the road on valuing casework. Still, the staff’s dedication to accomplishing it doesn’t stop the calls.
He gets all kinds of requests. Some are desperate (“I’m losing my house and the bank refuses to compromise.” “My husband has cancer and our insurance doesn’t cover the new treatment.”), some are bizarre (“The prison I’m in just replaced all the porcelain toilets with metal ones. It’s a huge waste of government money. You should investigate.” “The grass on the highway median is too tall. Can you get someone to cut it?”), and some are easy to fulfill (“My wife just had a baby, will the Senator send her a congratulations card?” “My son wants to go to WestPoint. Will the Senator sponsor him?”). All in all, he really enjoys answering the phones and helping people out. It’s fulfilling in a way he’s never experienced before. That all ends with the first fan-call.
It really was only a matter of time before fans figured out where he was and how to reach him. Jonas fans are nothing if not dedicated and resourceful. Joe once received a birthday cake (an ice-cream cake!) in the mail, so calling a publicly listed number to find him is no real challenge.
The first time a fan calls it’s the beginning of his third week in the office, and he and two other interns are on phone duty. He’s just finished a call with a woman in Austin when the guy next to him turns towards him with a puzzled expression.
“Uh yes,” the other intern says into the phone. “He’s right here.” And he hands the receiver to Nick with a shrug.
Nick honestly doesn’t think much of it. Maybe it’s a caller he talked with earlier checking back in? So when he says “Hello. This is Nick Jonas,” he nearly falls out of his seat when the caller screams in his ear. Everyone around him can clearly hear it too, and all eyes turn his way. He panics and slams the phone down, which they are never supposed to do.
“Uh? This might be a problem.”
It’s definitely a problem. Within days he is off phone duty indefinitely. That doesn’t stop the calls or the dirty looks the others give him as they deal with the fan calls.
So when early next week he’s writing letters and the girl behind him has fielded at least six fan calls in the last hour he turns to apologize. She’s the scantily dressed girl from the first day (though no longer scantily dressed whether by public shaming or a talking to by staff, he doesn’t know).
“I’m really sorry you’re dealing with that. If I could stop it, I would.” There really is no recourse. Recognizing it on Twitter or Facebook and requesting they stop would only draw more attention. And unlike a private individual, the Senator can’t just change his number.
“It’s cool. Actually, I really like it.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Just relieves stress. Like yesterday, I convinced a girl to wait on hold for nearly three hours. I kept checking in to tell her you were in a meeting. Oh, and Devin nearly made some girl cry yesterday when he told them that calling here in a non-emergency was a crime-like 911!”
He has no idea what to say.
“It’s just too bad you’re banned from the phones. You’d probably get the biggest kick out of messing with them.”
Week 4
He goes out to lunch a lot. The staffers take them, or a lobbyist, or someone visiting from Texas. Once, in the first week, the Senator took them all to lunch. It was pretty embarrassing to watch everyone fall over themselves to impress him or engage him in conversation.
Today, he’s going out with the four other male interns in the office and two of their intern buddies from the office next door. It’s the first time he has accepted an offer from the group of guys to go to lunch. Usually, he just claims he’s too busy and shuffles some papers around.
They end up at a pub style place on the Hill and are seated at a large, round table in the middle of the restaurant. The guy next to him immediately picks up the drink menu. Then, he determinedly looks up towards the rest of the table.
“Are you guys going to drink?”
The assortment of guys around the table make vague sounds and someone mutters that it’s only 11:30am. Nick stays silent.
“No seriously. I want a beer, but I’m not twenty-one. If we all order together no one will probably check our IDs.”
Nick’s not sure it will work like that, but this guy probably should have interned for a lobbying firm because he coerces agreement out of the group. Nick still mutters a quiet “Diet Coke” when asked what he wants, however.
The waiter scribbles on his notepad and then looks up. “Can I see some IDs?” He doesn’t say it accusingly or anything, and no one reaches for their wallets. All eyes turn to the guy sitting next to Nick. He flushes a little, but turns to the waiter.
“Come on man. Our wallets are all buried at the bottom of our bags.” The waiter suddenly looks dubious.
“Sorry, we card anyone who looks under thirty-five.”
What happens next is undoubtedly one of the most embarrassing situations he has ever been involved in. And that is saying a lot because he has popped a boner on stage in front of thousands of people.
The intern visibly straightens his posture and flashes his red Congressional Intern ID badge [v] at the waiter and says condescendingly “Listen, you don't need to see our ID's. We work for Senator Cornyn.”
“Well, unless the Distinguished Gentleman from Texas is willing to invoke his oversight authority to make the fine that we'd get slapped with disappear; I'm still going to have to see them.”
"Oversight authority, huh?” the intern mocks. “That's more knowledge than I'd expect from someone with your job.”
“And this is about as much stupidity as I'd expect from someone who agreed to lick envelopes for free.”
And they sit there in silence until the waiter finally walks off to the kitchen.
Nick is definitely busy the next time he gets invited to lunch.
Week 5
The American History Museum has a lot of random crap in it, Nick thinks. There are Dorothy’s ruby red slippers, Julia Child’s entire kitchen, the original Stars and Stripes flag, and a giant statue of George Washington dressed like Zeus to name a very few of the items on display. Nick is there for one specific reason-“The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, 3rd Floor East”. [vi]
He wanders past a long wall with a timeline of the presidents, and stops in front of an unusually short section in the timeline to examine the anomaly. Apparently, William Henry Harrison served only one month in office after catching pneumonia at his outdoor inauguration. God, that would have really sucked, he thinks. I’m definitely having an indoor party.
He moves quickly through a lot of the displays, but gets stuck in the section on life in the White House. He’s intrigued by all the toys and children’s belongings behind the glass. He definitely had an unusual adolescence, but the idea of being the child of the President is amazing. He tries to imagine it as he passes Chelsea Clinton’s ballet slippers and a lovely, blue dollhouse that belonged to the children of Grover Cleveland.
And then, in front of him is Clinton’s saxophone, and suddenly he is hit with the image of one of his guitars on display right beside it. He leaves the museum in a daze. Next
[i]The Office where Nick is working http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/visiting/d_three_sections_with_teasers/hart_senate_building_web_page.htm
[ii]The coolest art in the Congressional office buildings http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/artifact/Sculpture_25_00007.htm
[iii]This seems like a book Nick should own http://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/161039044X
[iv] This room used to be the Speaker’s office and famously was where a President died after a stroke. Now it’s a reading room, kinda odd. http://artandhistory.house.gov/art_artifacts/boggs-reading-room/index.aspx
[v] Congressional interns are hilarious, just fyi http://voices.washingtonpost.com/campus-overload/2010/05/that_intern_the_omg-look-at-my.html
[vi]This is my favorite exhibit in all of the Smithsonians. I hope Nick has had or will have a chance to check it out. http://americanhistory.si.edu/presidency/home.html