The Inside Joke

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. The actual story, in case you don’t know, is that St. Patrick came to Ireland, told the people they’re fools for believing in multiple gods, and force-fed his Christian propaganda down their throats. Now that the Republic of Ireland has collectively agreed that there is one imaginary being in the sky looking at them, effectively doing nothing but doing everything “for a reason” (as opposed to several imaginary beings in the sky looking at them, effectively doing nothing but doing everything “for a reason”), St. Patrick is a hero.

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The obvious way to celebrate that is to wear green and drink a lot. Duh. Thus, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in bars across the U.S. with guys heralding their machismo and spewing odd language like “bro” and “sick.” I have found myself surrounded by this creature many times in my life. I have raised my hand and hesitantly thwacked it against a straight man’s mirrored raised hand, accompanied by the proclamation “high five” in an Eastern European accent. I have thrashed my body against a straight woman’s body to the rhythm of a popular song blared so excruciatingly loud that the only viable conversation is small talk howled deafeningly into each other’s ears.

Needless to say, I don’t fit in. Maybe if the bars installed Xbox consoles around the perimeter, I’d stand a chance. I can more or less sum up my hatred for this environment with a situation called the “Inside Joke.”

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The Inside Joke

When these types of people go out together, they find it necessary to showboat the depth of their friendship. “Depth” might be the wrong word, actually. It doesn’t matter if they became friends 10 minutes prior. Bar life is just part of an intricate mating ritual, and making fellow patrons jealous is roughly equivalent to a peacock flourishing its feathers. Thus, it is merely important that every person in the bar gawks at these friends, intensely jealous of their bond.

Unlike the peacock, however, they do not indicate their bond through fashion. Every guy is wearing a light colored button-down shirt with vertical stripes hanging over dark tight-but-not-too-tight bootcut jeans, obscuring the tip of his ironic casual-style sneaker produced by a high fashion label. Nor do they indicate their bond through shared hobbies. Ask them what they do for fun. They “party.” “Hang out.” And if they feel like injecting some inimitable humor, “sleep.” They broadcast their bond through the art of the inside joke—the quirky and individualistic phrase, name, or gesture that tells everyone that they have “partied” and “hung out” before.

Take, for instance, the following conversation. Let’s make this bond be between a boy and a girl.

Boy: Remember that time we jumped at the boobfest?

Girl: (laughing uncontrollably) Boobfest! Boobfest! (makes a honking sound and raises both hands in the air with palms facing the ceiling)

Boy: (also now laughing uncontrollably) And Jack was there!

Girl: (laughing so hard that she spills her drink onto a stranger next to her dressed as a leprechaun) Jack! I miss Jack! Boobfest Jack! (makes another honking sound and raises both hands in the air with palms facing the ceiling)

Boy: (doing his best Abraham Lincoln impersonation and suppressing laughter) Four score and seven years ago… boobs! Jack! Boobfest!

Girl: (laughing so hard that her left leg convulses violently and falls off, splashing pulses of blood onto the already beer- and vomit-soaked floor) I miss jumping with Abraham Lincoln at Boobfest! (honks again)

The problem is that sometimes these friends did not go to the bar alone. Sometimes, they had a lapse in judgment and invited me. So while they laugh about Abraham Lincoln and boobs and one-by-one lose their appendages in fits of laughter, I am left sipping my Dr. Pepper and wishing I were on my couch digitally slaughtering middle school boys who are up past their bedtimes.

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So you know how I’ll be spending my St. Patrick’s Day? In my room. Sipping grapefruit juice and reading Stephen King. That’s right. I will be drinking the most hardcore of all juices while reading about zombies chasing telepathic mummy-dogs instead of downing shots of Jägermeister with the poor man’s cast of Jersey Shore. Oh, and maybe I’ll worship multiple gods just to spite the whole event. Take that, Ireland.

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