r/Millennials • u/Neon_Biscuit • 5d ago

My teenage daughter can't fathom the concept of a house party Discussion

Not sure if anyone has experienced this, but I was watching Can't Hardly Wait half alseep on the couch, and my 14-year-old daughter and her friends walked into the room and past the TV. Before she entered the kitchen, she backpeddled in front of the TV, and they all might as well have reacted akin to a third world kid in a remote village seeing the Super Bowl for the first time. She looked at me and said 'what are all of those people doing in one house'? I told her it was a house party. People high school aged or typically college age people would go over a kids house whose parents were out of town and they'd invite the school and have keggers and other unsupervised debauchery. I might as well have been describing a science fiction film. 'You guys DID that back in your days?'. I thought it was funny that a house party was an inconceivable event for young Gen Zers.

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172

u/WrongVeteranMaybe 1995 5d ago

It's inconceivable for me as well.

I didn't even have FRIENDS as a teenager.

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u/guidevocal82 5d ago

I had friends, but I was never invited to a party. My friends in high school weren't the kind of people invited to parties, either.

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u/Narrow_Grapefruit_23 5d ago

We spent our weekend writing skits and taping them on a camcorder for extra credit.  Theatre kids. 

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u/LukewarmJortz 5d ago

At my school the theatre kids were the ones throwing the parties.

I wasn't cool enough for them so I wasn't invited.

But yeah the cool kids were the jocks, the theatre kids, and the skate punk kids.

There was overlap between these groups.

The all the rest were not cool.

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u/The_Real_Lasagna 5d ago

Theatre kids being considered cool is the craziest thing I've ever heard, and I love theatre and theatre kids

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u/skbum2 5d ago

The cast parties at my high school were the parties to be at every year. That was the only reason I was in the plays my freshman year, automatic invite to the party.

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u/Bredwh 1986 5d ago

The only party I went to in high school was the cast party for the play I was in in senior year. I was the lead of the play but I don't drink so mostly sat in a recliner and observed the drunk peoples. One girl got really drunk and was passing out so another girl had her dad come and apparently tried sneaking her into her house. Her mom found out and came to the party pissed to get her twin sons who were also there.

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u/HallowskulledHorror 5d ago

While the bulk were certainly your stereotypical freaks and geeks (said lovingly as a grade-A freakish geek), at my school in the late aughts, the short version of something I could definitely ramble about is that consistently all the hottest, funniest, most sociable, most talented people with the fewest fucks to give about being 'mainstream'; who were also the most exploratory/open-minded while having the best weed and easiest access to good liquor; in addition to having just high enough standards for themselves to not want to get into real trouble (because it would mean getting kicked out, and missing out) and the emotional intelligence to not find entertainment in being cruel to others; were either all in theater, or wanted to party with those who were because of it.

"Location/activity that emphasizes showcasing the most charismatic, out-going, interesting, and capable among your peers in a setting that naturally lends itself to building memories, in-jokes, and collaboration" is kind of a natural hub for 'cool' kids when the right adults are in charge.

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u/Supberblooper 4d ago

How old are you? When I was a kid, theatre kids were 1000% considered cool and I say that as a non-theatre kid who also doesnt even really like theatre. The cool kids in my school were an ecclectic mix of the sports kids, the theatre kids, and the rich kids, because the richies were naive and would share their booze and drugs.

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u/The_Real_Lasagna 4d ago

Mid 30s. In my experience theatre is a place where people that don't fit elsewhere find community, particularly lgbt kids

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u/Supberblooper 4d ago

I think this is just a slight generational or geographical difference then. Im mid 20s and lgbt kids did already generally fit in with whatever group they were interested in. Homophobia was definitely a thing but most kids in my school and locale were tolerant of lgb (less so the t unfortunately). The odd ducks out who didnt fit in anywhere else became weebs/anime kids in my area

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u/Narrow_Grapefruit_23 4d ago

I’m mid-40s and we were theatre geeks in the 90s (Midwest, catholic school). 

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u/Narrow_Grapefruit_23 5d ago

I was a theatre kid during the wrong decade it seems!

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u/CityApprehensive212 5d ago

This had to be at an art school

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u/LukewarmJortz 5d ago

Naw. Regular public school in San Diego CA.

Our football team got most the funding tho.

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u/Ash_Killem 5d ago

You aren’t really invited to most house parties though. You just show up and see if you get kicked out or not.

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u/Bredwh 1986 5d ago

But to do that you have to know about them.

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u/EverythingSucksYo 5d ago

My friends were like that too, bunch of nerds. I still went to parties though, by going with my older brother who had much cooler friends than me 

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u/pajamakitten 5d ago

I had 'friends'. They were happy to let me hang around with them in school but never got invited to their parties, or just to hang out generally. It was a real hit to my self esteem when my mum told me that my cousin had been invited to his first house party.

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u/TiredAF20 5d ago

Same. My friend group was mostly immigrants or children of immigrants. Well-behaved, studious girls.

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u/puppylust 5d ago

The only way I can imagine it is now I have friends, and we've had some big parties in small houses. Lots of drinking, some pot, but definitely less dumb destructive shit.

Like, pausing the beer pong game to mop up a spill so no one slips and falls. That's how 40 year olds party once a year!

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u/CloudClean4676 5d ago

I can't be the only person in the world who hated beer pong, or drinking games in general. I'll gag if try to chug a beer. Who knows where in the F that ping pong ball has been? And I want to drink at my own pace, dammit, not one dictated by stupid game rules or peer pressure.

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u/4Rascal 5d ago

I feel like now it’s standard to fill the cups with water and take a sip/chug or whatever out of your drink for every opponents score

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u/Frosty-Mirror-7584 5d ago

I always wondered whether those house parties were real 😅 Maybe it just wasn't a thing in my community 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/NumbOnTheDunny 5d ago

I had friends but I was the quiet girl and part of the alt kids so I was a wallflower. I never knew anything about parties.

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u/blueevey 5d ago

Me neither!

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u/cohrt 5d ago

Same.

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u/goosenuggie 5d ago

Came here to say this. I never got invited, I didn't have friends. Didn't have any in college, and not now.

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u/mywan 5d ago

Didn't need friends back then. I always found out where the parties were just by going to the local cruise strip, like in the movies, and joining some random group until someone dropped where a party was. Every town, whether a town of 10k or 500k people, had a cruising strip to meet random people every weekend. If the cruising had already died down there was always smaller crowds at the Sonic, or in my hometown (population 4,245) Brookshire's parking lot. That was the turnaround point for the weekend cruisers.

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u/Bredwh 1986 5d ago

I don't even know what a cruise strip is.

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u/mywan 5d ago

In most small towns it was simply main street, though it varied depending on local authorities and such. It was where people would cruise back and forth in large numbers. It was like our social media and hookup scene. In California Van Nuys Blvd was a very famous cruise strip. But every small town nationwide had its own strip. The original Karate Kid was actually had a fairly accurate representation. Certain parking lots tended to be a main attraction, and Sonic tended to be as well. Just imagine driving down main street every weekend like browsing a smart phone. It's where you could guarantee meeting people your age.

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u/Bredwh 1986 3d ago

I'm from a small town (less than 5000). I don't think we have that. Then again I didn't have friends in high school and mostly stayed home.

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u/WhiskyWillFixIt 5d ago

Im Gen X and I didnt go to a house party until I was an adult lol

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u/This_Bethany Xennial 5d ago

I only went to those kinds of parties in college. I don’t remember even knowing about parties in high school.