Exactly one year ago, my older brothers Greg and Michael decided to take their first trip to Chicago to visit me. After two decades of letting me revel in little sisterhood, they turned the tables on me and the pressure was on; I had to prove myself as a consummate host and magically bring the movie Old School to life all around them. It was up to me to trot out everything impressive about my college experience, providing access to rowdy parties and, I don’t know, babes handing out beef jerky and tequila shots. I panicked a little. How do you show guests your life at NU (or a cooler version of it) in a weekend?
My first instinct was to issue them a warning. I began to plan out how I’d break the news that we’re sort of the Michael Cera of the Big Ten, and that I’m more knowledgeable about the granola bar options in the bin under my desk than the Chicago restaurant scene. That actually, I had a Legal Studies paper due Monday morning and a student play I wanted to see Friday night, and I don’t really do deep-dish pizza. “I hate to disappoint,” I rehearsed. I guess I’ve just gotten a bit lamer (or calmer, however you want to arrange those letters) since freshman year.
Instead I kicked off the weekend in true Northwestern fashion: Awkwardly, giving a slightly misinformed campus tour. “This is the life and sciences building,” I stammered, gesturing toward a sprawling and almost totally incomplete construction site. “Wow, you should like, go work in the Admissions Office or something,” Greg said. “No, you should,” I shot back. Good one, right? Really zinged him there. I was relieved just to see the Lakefill – beautiful and self-explanatory.
And then there was football. And hot dogs, and deep-dish pizzas, and a serving of onion strings generous enough to mistake for the talking trash heap from Fraggle Rock. There were beer towers and cigarettes and a downright miserable crawl to the pharmacy for Pepto Bismol, the only substance I could then fathom funneling. The amount of heartburn the three of us suffered that weekend could have dissolved a complete set of dinosaur fossils, but what can you do? Chicago!
Inside Hundo, they nodded approvingly. “This is a pretty good college bar,” Michael said, before suggesting he and Greg play a game of “Guess Who’s A D-Bag In Here?” with me as referee. Thirty-four years old and cognizant of his adult appearance, Michael approached a designated D-bag wearing an Escobar soccer jersey and proceeded to spin a gigantic web of random lies. “You watch Entourage? I’m actually an investor in the (fictional) movie Medellin, the one about Pablo Escobar. We’re making it happen, man,” he crowed. “No way!” the kid exclaimed, eyes widened in awe. “Can I invest, too? I’ll call my dad right now!” See?
Hoarse and exhausted, I failed to get extraordinary plans together for their last night in town. I gave up on conjuring a crazy exaggeration out of the precious NU life, and as we all sat around the living room at my friends’ house, I realized it was the closest we’d come to actually living it. Seeing my brothers and the kids I’ve been friends with the longest at NU getting along made me feel like a proud mama. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner, but if that’s my family portrait, consider me very lucky.
