Intern ≠ Parakeet

When I was nine, I decided I wanted a goat. Needed a goat. I bought books, researched different breeds, visited local farms, and even offered to knit little goat booties to keep its hooves from scuffing the floors.

So my parents bought me a parakeet.

And as you might suspect from a kid who spent her summers threatening to knit shoes for livestock, the idea of a friend in a cage appealed to me. Unfortunately for both of us though, my face was huge and horrifying. It was pink and featherless and smelled of sack lunch. My parakeet sunk into a deep depression.

Enter: the concept of reflections as friends. I'd read somewhere that parakeets were happiest with other birds, but if you didn't feel like shelling out the $19.99 for another bird, you could just hang a mirror in the cage. So I hung a mirror in the cage. And she fell for it. She'd spend all day whispering to it, trying to feed it seeds, and preening its cold, metallic feathers without even a hint of suspicion.

But she was also a parakeet. Her brain was a good 200 times smaller than the average intern's, which is to say: You aren't fooling anyone.



New intern, my ass. I know my own reflection when I see it.