When I Was... How Old?!

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...

Today a new intern started at my office.  She is the niece of someone vaguely connected to our show, a fact that I was not surprised to learn after my boss showed me her resume and it listed "Dancing and Cheerleading" on it.  But I am trying not to prejudge, and also trying to conceal how much I don't want another girl to come into my office.  The thing is that as much as I do wish I had someone nearby to compliment my shoes more often, I like pretending to be overwhelmed in the lonely lady fight against the crass boy energy (when really I think that they're funny).  Also, there is second girl intern starting next week, and my fear is that I will spend the first month that they're both here watching my two male office mates try to have sex with them, the second month that they're here being a fifth wheel in my own office, and the third month diffusing an icy chill of screw-uppery and being the only person who is still speaking to everyone.  I would prefer to avoid all of these things.

So today girl intern #1 showed up, cute as can be, slightly overdressed but totally in the way that someone should be overdressed for their first day at a new office, and she was very friendly and sweet.  I showed her around a little bit and tried to get a sense of her life, but somehow in my questioning I missed what my office mate later revealed to me as some pretty big news: The new intern is seventeen.  As in years old.  As in holy hell that's a young intern and none of us in this office talks in any way appropriately for most civilized grown-up company and certainly not for someone who couldn't even go register for the army if I asked her to.  That is a young, young lady.  If she weren't wearing that cute little black cardigan in the picture I posted, I could be in danger of getting hauled off by Mariska Hargitay for putting that on the internet.

So while it will be a slight stretch to make daily chatter when I have no idea what TV shows she grew up watching or if she knew who Michael Jackson was before he died, at least I know that, by law, I will not have to watch my office mates put the moves on her.  And, in one last mega-bonus, I can tell myself that it is only thanks to her teenagerdom that she is way skinnier than me.