You know it’s going to be the best last day of co-op ever when upon arriving at the office you get lei’d.
Yup, I went there, I cracked that joke. Have been waiting nearly three months to do it. Thought I might be mature and resist the urge to make a snarky pun? Guess again!
My lei was gorgeous, intricately woven white ginger and fragrant, while Travis’s was made of red berries and was about as manly as a lei can get.
I basically spent the entire morning wandering around and showing everyone I’d gotten lei’d. You should try it sometime; it’s a real mood booster.
At the lunch hour, the younger attorneys took us out to Chinatown for Pho. Which is pronounced “Fahhhh” and not “Foooooeeeee” like everyone on the East Coast says it. Have been waiting years to point that one out. Snark snark snark.
I knew this was going to be an awesome lunch because directly behind us was a tank of Arrowanas (enormous silver barracuda-looking fish, which always look like they’re frowning) and upon announcing their name as such, one attorney pointed out “Oh, I thought you said marijuana). Turned out, that our lunch time conversation was possibly the crappiest I’ve ever had. It involved the two married attorneys with microhuman infant daughters. Like all guys I know, they’re all about pride and glory, I mean, what guy isn’t, right? However, the subject at hand was potty training, i.e. the making of stool, going # 2, grunting out a lumpy, dropping a deuce, or as they say in Hawaii, “making shishi.” I’m bringing this back to the East Coast with me. Instead of excusing myself to the restroom, I’m going to announce, “Man, I gotta make shishi like it’s my job.”
I found this topic of conversation hilarious, because as an unmarried grubby law student dating an equally grubby, though somewhat more legendary law student, children are a foreign concept to me, as remote and unfathomable as contingent vested remainders (for those of you who don’t speak the law, I think this has something to do with title insurance, but I could be wrong. I once saw an attorney do a happy dance over it).
Anyway, back to crap. Travis and I and the one other unmarried barren attorney sat rapt as these two guys described in hilarious detail the trials and tribulation of potty training a microhuman. One had had a major setback involving potty trauma, where one parent got peed on and now the child felt so bad she refused to go (so sad), but the other had finally achieved success and as his wife had taped the event (not the actual making of shishi, but the afterparty) and there now exists a video of a very intelligent attorney on camera, whooping it up and singing “ Baby, made poopie in the potty! Woohoo!” I would very much like to have seen this video, but didn’t know how to ask.
My own brilliant Dad figured out very early on, that with regard to potty training me, food would have to be involved. I don’t know the specifics since my mom can’t talk about it without convulsing in fits of laughter, but apparently, my Dad, who is a chemist and holds degrees from various institutions of higher learning, made some sort of M&M trail designed to lead me to the potty. Somehow eating candy off the floor was supposed to trigger the urge to use the potty. Well here’s what happened: being a glutton, I happily followed the candy trail all the way to the potty and upon getting there; guess what I did with the potty? I lost interest. Once the candies were gone, what was I really going to do with the potty, anyway? It’s not like the potty was made of candy.
(If anyone else is thinking of the Family Guy episodes where Peter and Brian trap James Wood TWICE with this method of candy trails, all I have to say to you is: “OOOHH, a piece of candy!”)
I don’t know actually how it was then that I came to use the potty, since my Mom can’t get past the candy trail part without aforementioned laughter. But I imagine, I summoned up all my mental capacity that lay dormant in me and decided that making shishi in your own pants is gross.
But yes, these two young attorneys were absolutely mesmerizing in their tales of potty training, and the father who had had the potty success with his microhuman daughter described the method in which he was potty trained, which involved his mom and sitting in a bathroom for two days straight. This seemed pretty hard core to me, but then again, I was a flunky of the candy trail school of thought.
There was not irony lacking in this conversation, these two attorneys are both freaking brilliant at their jobs and would probably blow all of us way at trivia pursuit and other tests of the intellect, so in recounting the highs and lows of potty training, there was some self-awareness that they were literally celebrating the making of poo.
Of all my co-op lunches, even the one where I choked on a fishbone with the WilmerHale investment management guys and nearly died trying to clear it the basement bathroom of Kingfish Hall (good times), this lunch had to be my favorite. Crap is one of my very favorite subjects. And for those of you readers who aren’t lawyers, this just goes to show that lawyers are people too. They celebrate the making of shishi in the potty just like every other parent.
When I returned to the office, since I had no work to do, I spent the afternoon roaming the halls with Travis, both of us showing off our leis once more. I left half an hour early, and that was the end. The last day of co-op ever.
The night would not end there, there was a hilarious Valentine’s Day event thrown by the biggest divorce firm in town (their motto: divorce humanely. I think this is like saying: smoke healthy. Or: kill sparingly) and later one of the very awesome and chill attorneys who could not be present at the crappiest lunch ever, met up with Travis and I and the other barren unmarried attorney and showed us the coolest outside roof top bar in Honolulu. Unmarried barren attorneys do not talk of crap. We talk in practicalities. Example: how long after someone reaches legal age may he or she spend the night with no fear of them booting in your bed? The consensus was at least a full year before the individual may spend the night without the fear of you waking up and having your bed smell like sophomore year of college.
Leis, shishi, roof top mojitos, not a bad way to end THE BEST DARN CO-OP EVER and now onto the opening of the floodgates as Aaron, Anna and Melissa, and the Martin family parental units descend upon the islands…and hilarity ensues.
