Spud Wars

 I had offered to make the team baked potatoes. To tell the truth, I just had a hankering for them myself, but when I found out that 2/4 other housemates also thought that sounded good, I was on it.  I like making food for people and the fresh tomato pasta sauce I had spent several hours making yesterday had been a disaster. It was all cooked, looking (and smelling) delicious when Bryan announced he didn’t like tomatoes OR squash, Lauren quietly sprinkled parmesan on her plain noodles and Danny was no where to be found. So I really wanted a take two at preparing dinner. Plus, potatoes are easy-- my recipe was simple—seven minutes in the microwave and voila—a meal fit for kings.

Or so I thought.

Midway through Potato One (Lauren’s), the power in the kitchen went off. This happened to us on the first day, when it was just Lauren and I at Blackstone.  We had been extremely proud of our problem solving abilities—the two of us had gone down into the basement and flipped the switch on the fuse box. It had worked and we gloated (neither of us are adept at all at solving those kind of issues). So, I trotted down the stairs, through the boys bathroom, a storage room, the communal laundry room and into the dark, damp and dank basement room where the fuse box is kept. I flipped the switch a couple times for good measure, and a few others just to be sure (and heard a yelp from Danny), and then I headed back up and restarted the microwave.

Two minutes later, all stopped again. I rolled my eyes and went downstairs, unlocking bolts and latches as I went. Flips switched, I traced my footsteps, securing the doors behind me.

Up in the kitchen, I started the spud baking again. A minute later, all was dead. I checked and the potato was almost done. I was going to cook this sucker no matter what.

“Your potato is almost done,” I said to Lauren, “I’m just going to flip the switch again.”

“It’s ok,” Lauren said. “You can have my potato.”

“No, no,” I said gallantly. “I said I’d make one for you. This one is yours.”

I traipsed back down to the basement and flipped the switch.  Lauren waited in the kitchen to start the nuking process the minute she saw lights blinking on the screen. A minute later, hers was done. I was triumphant. One down. Mine went in.

Towards the last few minutes of cooking, Bryan had began to pace hungriliy around the kitchen. I made a decision at that point, however—this next potato was mine. I had been noble enough with Lauren’s potato. Bryan would have to fend for himself him for his own potato (I was still a little sore from his refusal to eat last night’s pasta sauce.)

The power must have died three or four more times in the seven minutes it took to cook my potato. I began to leave the doors downstairs open and unbolted, expecting to return in a few seconds. We got a system down-- Lauren stood guard in the kitchen, finger poised over the start button to expedite things. One minor glitch when Danny went into the bathroom and access to the fuse was cut off, but roughly fifteen minutes and fifty sprinted stairs later, my potato was done. It emerged—soft, perfect, warm, and smelling delicious. Bryan’s went in and was done roughly nine minutes and one trip (which I made) later.

My potato seemed to glow—it was like a golden nugget, I thought to myself as I added butter, salt, tomatoes, lettuce, hummus. Never had I worked so hard for a meal. But oh boy was this spud worth it. 

The Kids at Blackstone

There are three components to this program, Emily said. Three ways to learn. One is the seminar—in which we are introduced to ideas and venues all across Chicago. The second is, of course, our internship. And the third is living in Chicago—that includes who we are living with.

The crowd at Blackstone could not have been better chosen by a casting director for the Real World. As we came together on the first day, my jaw dropped with the diversity amongst us.

Lauren is my roommate, quiet and elegant. We met on the first day when it was only the two of us and passed a companionable day in mostly silence; reading, checking our e-mail and occasionally taking little walks together. Since that first day, we have become closer—having many chats about life, the boys we live with and the people we meet. I watched her dream come true—she is working a PR internship in the John Hancock building. She dresses up each day for work, looking immaculate in stilettos and silk skirts, and has her own, lakefront office on Michigan Avenue.

Danny is the baby of the family, only eighteen. He is a business major from Wilbeforce University, an all-black college in Ohio. My suspicion is that his friends and family in the city drew him more than anything else—his boys come over nightly to hang out. He offers sudden and unexpectedly perceptive reflections on life ad the rest of the time baffles me with his diet of oatmeal, mcdonalds and ego waffles and yet-- immaculate physique.

Bryan escapes easy description. He is majoring in Criminal Justice and Japanese. He’s got wings tattooed on his ankles and a lip ring, likes anime and is in a frat.

Philipp is twenty-four, a tall German exchange student who plays Mexican acoustic guitar and heavy metal—a leftover from the days when he had long haired and lived for the heavy metal scene. He is working in the most dangerous neighborhood in the city and in him, I find sound advice, intellectual conversation and a penchant for obscure European foods. 

None of us judge each other, except for minor infractions like leaving unwashed dishes or buying the wrong kind of hot dogs. Instead, I live in a remarkable environment where we occasionally eat dinner together and embark on conversations on the people we meet and our relationships of the past and where we go grocery shopping and laugh the whole way about our broken shopping cart. Even after two weeks together, I have concluded only two universal truths amongst us. We all like bananas. A lot. We all like T-Pain’s On a Boat. A lot.