Tired of going to the same old movie theater in your local area on Friday nights? Not big on spending beaucoup bucks on fancy dinners? Does the thought of spending hours in line to get into a nightclub only to be served overpriced drinks and have loud music beating into your head repulse you (like it does me)? Just couldn't get Taylor Swift concert tickets this summer? Well, MJ and I did something offbeat last Saturday night: We spent a night at the museum. No we didn't go see the Ben Stiller Museum (filmed at the Natural History Museum in New York) nor the sequel, we actually went to various museums along the National Mall that opened until midnight for the Summer Solstice. It was free, we got matching temporary tattoos, we saw the giant blue whale model in the center, we learned about Egyptian gods like Horus (with a hawk head), Thoth (with an ibis head) and Anubis (with a dog/jackal head). Right up my alley: no alcohol needed (although some people seemed to have had multiple drinks before entering), no admission fee needed, and even some knowledge sprinkled in. It was also a hot summer night, so retreating into the air-conditioned museums was just what the date night doctor ordered.
MJ and I also spent "a night in the basement" at one of her friends' birthday parties, a twenty-something friend who had a beautiful home in the suburbs.....that belonged to her parents, which meant upstairs and various other rooms in the house were off limits, but the prime hangout spot was the basement. Yup, it felt exactly like a high school basement party. I was lucky enough to be invited to co-ed gatherings back in the day despite being one of the nerdiest guys in the school, just by being mildly funny and helping other people with homework and group assignments. I hadn't thought much about those get-togethers for a long time, but our "Night in the Basement" reminded me how much I missed those nights, where I felt like I was accepted as part of a group, where I could get out of the house and be with people my own age, to just be living life as a teenager. For my generation at least, the basement was the best place for adults to let kids just hang out without causing too much noise (or at least it would be drowned out) and where there were all kinds of cool stuff lying around like video games, board games, hula hoops, more space, and most importantly, lack of expensive and fragile furniture. And basements are like 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house, at least in suburban Chicago where I grew up, ideal for young teens to cool out their raging hormones. Of course I didn't know how to act back then in these basement parties, so I didn't take advantage of them as much as I should have, and my 36-year-old self (man I feel old just saying that number) didn't really enjoy the basement activities as much as my 16-year-old self would have, but it was just enough to bring back the nostalgia. Oh and we didn't have alcohol back then neither; that's a game changer. I wonder if the new generation of teenagers still have these nights in the basement, or if they do they just sit in a circle looking down at their phones.
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