I was born in New York. For the first few years of my life, I pronounced "dog," as "dowGUH" and spoke at the speed of lightning, which, hey, was pretty impressive for a two-year-old with freakishly tiny ears and a minimal amount of hair. After moving to Idaho and living there for 17 years, I lost the New York dialect and, thank God, my hair grew in (I still have awkwardly tiny ears), but, despite the loss of my accent, New York has always been my home. When I was really young, I remember being confused when we would go visit New York because every time I got off a plane, I was home. It didn't matter if we were landing in Idaho or New York: I loved both places equally and considered them both where I belonged.
Today, I don't live in Idaho or New York. Instead, I’ve somehow found myself splitting my time between Massachusetts and Indiana for the past couple years. Still, even if I don't get to frequent them as often as I'd like, I think of all four of these wonderful places my home. Last weekend, I had the opportunity to take an extremely spontaneous trip to go see one of my best friends, Chelsea, who lives in NYC. And, when I got off the train at Grand Central, a place I had never even been before, I was once again struck with the same feeling I had when I was younger: the feeling of coming home.
I was only in NYC for two days. It was the best. The following are eight things that I learned.
1. All the cops knew Chels & I were feelin' 22.
So, basically, Chelsea has the coolest job ever at TIME and got awesome, free, front-row tickets to Taylor Swift for a Saturday night. She asked me to go to the concert with her on a Wednesday, I immediately booked my ticket for Friday and we spent the next three days texting about how we were going to dress up like hipsters and make fun of our exes.
Here's the thing you should know about me and Chelsea when we're together: we say "OOKAYYYY" about everything that excites us. LITERALLY, everything. It could be because we've just seen a well-designed ampersand or because the Queen of England happens to be right next to us. Real life, those things have happened to us and we showed an equal amount of enthusiasm for both events, which kind of puts into perspective how much we like ampersands. Anyway, when we got to pick up our tickets at the "Media Will Call," I'm pretty sure that I said "OOKAYYYY" so loud that people were concerned for their safety. It was almost as embarrassing of a moment as twenty minutes before, when Chelsea walked up to a group of cops to ask them directions to the bus and, before she had said anything, they said: "Taylor Swift, to the left." We're hoping that we were just lookin' so 22 and not like T-Swift's biggest fans, but I'm pretty sure that we were more excited than any child at that concert, so it's a toss-up.
2. Being 21 in NYC is the most fun activity ever. (Like, ever).
Even though I would love it, I am confident that I can't live in NYC after graduation because I wouldn't be able to function. It is way, way too much fun and the night life is (obviously) so much better than Muncie. We went to the kind of bars where it would be highly inappropriate to kick in the drywall, show up in sweat pants or pay a quarter for beer (RIP Dill Street, I will miss you).
Besides being classier than the Chug, it's the easiest thing ever to meet interesting people at the bars in NYC. Within five minutes of sitting down on Friday, a guy came up to us and by the end of the night, we were all great friends, bonding over our love of the show "Million Dollar Listing" and the word "LITERALLY. " His name was Rob and he was a broker/personal trainer that had a really cute laugh. Well, actually, his name was Rod, but Chelsea and I were completely convinced that his name was Rob, even though he showed us his license/twitter handle/website. (We're LITERALLY the worst at remembering things, like when we were trying to walk to the ocean and we went an hour in the wrong direction or when we ended up in Greenfield, IN instead of the Lucas Oil Stadium despite driving past it twice, so really, the fact that we couldn't get his name straight isn't that surprising).
Anyway, both nights we went out, we didn't end up getting back to Chelsea's apartment until the sun was coming up, which was kind of a struggle on Saturday since we had to be at TIME by 9 a.m. for filming, but it was so worth it. I love sleep and this weekend, I learned that if I ever move to NYC, that's something that will probably be compromised for meeting intriguing people and have amazing experiences. Also, I learned that I am okay with that.
3. Some restaurants put drugs in their margaritas.
Well, probably. They were pretty addictive in the way that we assume drugs are. In fact, we developed such a strong addiction to the tequila in them that we somehow convinced ourselves that we could do shots of Petrone, which is just hilarious because we are definitely no longer capable of that (nor have we ever been). But, anyway, the point is that these margs were delicious. As soon as I found Chels at Grand Central on Friday night, we went to this adorable hole-in-the-wall restaurant that had margarita happy hour late, so basically, it was the best place ever. We got there a little before seven and didn't leave until ten thirty, just telling stories and drinking margs that (direct quotes from Chelsea) "tasted like college" and "were better than the time I spent $80 on tequila" (which, FYI, could have been either Homecoming 2011 OR St. Patricks Day 2012, but I'm pretty sure it was both). It was the perfect beginning to a perfect weekend, which really is saying a lot because we did do those shots of Petrone and that stuff is known to bring even the biggest of partiers to their knees during $1.50's (again, RIP Dill).
4. The NYC Subway is probably the most complex thing to ever exist.
There are colors. There are numbers. There are letters. There are express trains. There are local trains. There are approximately a million-and-a-half stops. There are probably other things that I didn't even realize existed because I was just so overwhelmed by everything about the map. The complexity of it made me embarrassed about my initial two-day struggle with the Boston T because compared to NYC's public transportation, Boston's is meant for small children that are directionally challenged.
Oh, and here's a fun fact that isn't fun at all: there are MOLE PEOPLE in the NYC subway.* The underground system there is so large that people can actually (illegally) live in abandoned sites without being found. My mind cannot wrap around how complex/gross that is and, as much as I love New York, my 45 minute commute via public transportation this morning was much more enjoyable sans mole people and multiple coding systems.
*All facts are according to Chelsea, who also firmly believes that Paul McCartney has been dead since the 1960s and that Illuminati alumni include Beyonce, Rihanna and Jay-Z (but not Ke$ha. They won't let her in).
5. The world is terrifyingly small & there are lots of Irish people in it.
Chelsea and I both were lucky enough to grow up in Sandpoint, so we’ve always been exposed to small-town coincidences. I’ve come to expect them. I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised when a sorority sister traveled hundreds of miles to compete in a race right next to my hometown or when one of my friends from Idaho was dating a guy from Montana that just happened to be the same guy from Montana my friend from Indiana was dating. It was weird, but it happens because the world is so, so small.
On our way out on Friday night, Chelsea and I were taking the subway when a guy asked me directions. Me, being the most confused human after trying to decode the seemingly illegible scribbles of colors, numbers, and letters that called itself a map, just stared at him. Chelsea actually did the talking because she’s smart and understands things. He thanked her and told us that he was from Ohio, which led to us basically shouting “WE WENT TO BALL STATE!” (We may have just come from finishing our third crack-margarita).
It was cool enough that this guy knew where Ball State was, but it got even better when a guy who was with his girlfriend and completely unrelated to the Ohio man, said, “Awww, yeah, FUNCIE!” Turns out, he went to Butler and his girlfriend went to IU. Looking back now on all the coincidences, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to chirp and I am very, very disappointed that we missed it.
If you don’t go to Ball State, watch the last half of this video from Cinco de Cry-o* and you’ll understand what it's all about. You can (and probably should) skip the whole first part of us singing the National Anthem because we aren’t very good, but you’ll understand why chirping is appropriate in any situation.
Anyway, the next night, Chels and I went to this super cool bar where half the people we met were from Ireland and weirdly enough, a lot of them didn't know each other. Even stranger is that they were all heading to Boston within the next week to tour Harvard, which they told me before I mentioned that was where I was currently working (Boston, not Harvard... I'm not that cool). And, as I am writing this on the train leaving South Station almost a week later, I am 98% sure I just ran into a couple of the guys that said they were coming up for the week. The world is such a tiny place.
*Cinco de Cry-o: The Cinco de Mayo where all of our friends were together for the last time in college and we spent a large amount of the night bawling, telling stories and singing "Wagon Wheel."
6. It's impossible to understand an Irish man at a loud bar.
Also, they won't care if the lead star of Glee just died. Or, they might. It was really difficult to understand what they were saying and apparently, Chelsea and I are LITERALLY the worst listeners in the entire world (see Rob/Rod situation), so the guy that Chelsea broke the news to could have been devastated. Or, he could have just wanted another beer. It will forever be a bigger mystery than the subway map.
7. I am destined to marry an older man.
One time, my friend Allie and I were having a “real talk” and she asked me why I wasn’t into a certain guy. He was nice, funny, good-looking and was into me, but I just wasn’t having it. I told her that he was great, but he was too much of a boy and that I was looking for a man, which I know, totally sounds like I’m a character in a terrible romance novel, but embarrassingly enough, it’s true. And, after this weekend, it’s pretty clear that I am destined to end up with someone at least slightly older than me.
It all began with the Rob/Rod situation on Friday night. At some point, we were talking about me finishing out my senior year and Rob/Rod asked me what I was doing for Spring Break. Right now, my plan is to go to New Orleans and when I told him, we joked around about him coming with me. Then he said, "Well, that's over my birthday, but we can just pretend I'm turning 26 because I'm probably too old to go on Spring Break." And, that's when I learned that Rob/Rod, the man who had been holding my hand, the man who had bought us drinks, the man who I had accidentally just invited to go to Mardi Gras with me, was 35 (and, also that he thought it was acceptable to be going on Spring Break at 26). Awk hawk.
The next night (while Chels and I were still just feelin' so 22 after seeing our girl, Tay), I interacted with so many older people again, although not with Rob/Rod because at this point, we still thought his name was Rob and it was impossible to find him via social media like he said to because we were Facebook-stalking the wrong broker-turned-personal-trainer (which is a surprisingly common career transition in NYC). There was the man from Ecuador who worked in corporate of Bed, Bath and Beyond, opening up our conversation with, "You have a young face" and ending it with, "I'm 31." There was the adorable guy with perfect curly hair who worked at Bloomberg, getting ready to leave the country and also, his twenties. And, finally, there was the boxer from Ithaca that I was pretty sure was Drake in disguise, but I was also equally convinced that he was old enough to have been in high school for the premiere Degrassi episode when it came out in 1979.
In my short weekend visiting NYC, I learned that it's confusing for me to go to bars there because of my inability to tell people's ages/weird ability to attract old(er) men/inability to remember the last consonant in a person's name. But, honestly, ending up with someone as old as Rob/Rod or Fake Drake is way, way better than the time I was talking to a guy at my 20th birthday party and he told me he was in the Army, but was actually in high school. My life is one big awkward moment. It's fine.
8. If you tell someone you're from Boston while wearing anything from a thrift store, you will be called a hipster.
And, you will love it.