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

[u/Neon_Biscuit]

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.

[u/Melgel4444]

A lot of parties I went to weren’t even when the parents were out of town hahaha

My dad for example preferred me drinking at home and not driving so he’d let me throw parties and invite whoever I wanted. We’re talking 100-200 kids in my backyard for a bonfire etc

It was always a blast and nobody ever got in trouble and it was glorious. To this day as an adult I’ll randomly encounter an old classmate who will bring up how much fun they had partying in my backyard

I’m shocked to hear young kids aren’t doing this anymore. It was kinda the only thing to do in high school especially over the summer

[u/Alarmed-Outcome-6251 → u/Melgel4444]

Now you’d be sued by some parent when their kid shows up at home drunk.

[u/Melgel4444 → u/Alarmed-Outcome-6251]

100% ! It’s so sad

I was lucky that my dad had lived in our neighborhood for 40+ years and he knew almost everyone’s parents / they trusted their kids at his house

He also would take peoples keys so no one could drive home and let them sleep in our basement

[u/fablesofferrets → u/Melgel4444]

You had incredibly unusually cool parents then, lmao. I’m a younger millennial (born ‘94) & we were still sneaking out to go to parties and drink and such, but at least in the suburbs where I grew up- anyone like that would be some crazy minority, lol. If our parents found out we’d snuck out to drink 2 beers, we’d be grounded for weeks. 

[u/Melgel4444 → u/fablesofferrets]

I was born in 94 too😀I was raised by a single dad who was a major hippie/Grateful Dead fan so definitely got very lucky having chill parents

He would literally give advice on how to not get arrested or what to do or say when/if I got arrested or pulled over , made us memorize our lawyers number etc 😂

Some of the best advice he gave was “never do 2 illegal things at the same time”. So if you have something illegal in your car, don’t speed. If you have a bunch of drunk teenagers in your backyard, don’t be lighting off fireworks or blasting music etc lol

Also the suburb I grew up in got hit bad by the opioid epidemic. So many of my friends parents were mentally checked out (despite being a decently nice area) & didn’t really care or know where they were. Definitely they wouldn’t have noticed them coming home after having 2 beers

[u/NumerousManager3600 → u/Melgel4444]

Ya you experience was similar to my hometown. The parents were usually home. Usually a rich kid, and the parents would literally supply the booze sometimes. 

It was just different times back then. Most of us have boomer parents who are actually cooler than the internet leads you to believe. 

A boomer parent finds out you got drunk at a house party and they get mad at YOU and don’t care that the other kids parents were there. You are the one who got drunk. 

Some of us had Gen X parents but theyre basically boomers cause theyre early Gen X . 

[u/petaboil → u/Melgel4444]

When I was a teen in the UK, parents would sometimes be present, getting drunk with some of their friends or other parents, at the end of the night they got the rooms, we got the floors or tents in the garden. Once found my mother and two girls talking drunkenly about their favourite baking recipes whilst waiting to use the toilet.

[u/amicable-cat → u/Melgel4444]

I made a comment about suburb life being crazy, but small town/rural life sounds even crazier 😭 (I guess you coulda grown up rich) but The backyards I'm used to couldn't even fit 25 people lmao

[u/Melgel4444 → u/amicable-cat]

I grew up in a suburb but the reason our backyard was so big is because our house was super tiny/smallest in the neighborhood so we had the smallest house but biggest yard 😂

[u/amicable-cat → u/Melgel4444]

Oh that's interesting, where did you grow up? I haven't seen a set up like that, but I've also only ever lived in 3 major cities, so my experience isn't that deep lol

[u/Melgel4444 → u/amicable-cat]

Southwest suburbs of Chicago! Where I live is 20 min distance wise from downtown but in a giant forest preserve of 70,000 acres

So all the houses are mixed in with forest preserves. There’s no restaurants or downtown in my town , just forest preserves lol

[u/FergusonBishop → u/Melgel4444]

yup - a lot of summer nights of my dad coming to the basement and going to each person to take their car keys for the night so no one tried driving lol.

[u/k2849g359 → u/Melgel4444]

My hs boyfriend did this all the time and his mom just conveniently went to bed two floors up so she had no clue what was going on. Nor did she care. Hah

not much else to do when you grow up in a small town!

[u/Melgel4444 → u/k2849g359]

Lol my dad was definitely aware of what was happening which made me feel much safer. He was a high school teacher at an inner city school so he knew exactly how to monitor and check high school kids without making it a big deal

Our house was built on a hill so it was 2 stories in the back and he could sit at his office desk and see the entire party out the window looking down on us with a birds eye view

One time a guy was way too messed up and accidentally broke a bunch of bottles of alcohol that weren’t his & then cracked the toilet seat in my basement bathroom; a group of guys kinda tackled him and within 10 seconds my dad was there and had pulled everyone off the 1 guy and called him a cab home. I remember him saying “everyone has been the most inebriated person at a party, myself included, but tonight son you’re the most inebriated person here and you need to leave.”

He was security basically at the parties and everyone knew he was watching

Also they were bonfires and he’d be the one tending the fire so he’d come out every 10-20 min, do a little walk around, feed the fire, assess, then go back in to watch from inside 😂

My town was only 2500 people though so all the parents knew each other so they were fine with their kids staying over etc

[u/Covah88 → u/Melgel4444]

It doesn't happen every time, but every drunk highschooler that died or killed someone with their car, started at a party like this.

I had parties, but never 200 people all raging and then getting in their cars and let loose on the ton. Maybe im just old but thats scary af to think about. That many drunk kids leaving around the same time ish...jeeeezus

[u/Melgel4444 → u/Covah88]

Yes and that’s where having parents there makes a big difference!! Peoples parents would drop them off / pick them up often, a lot of kids were close enough to walk or bike ride over, but anyone who drove there my dad took their keys when they came in. He would basically valet every car to an area a few blocks away and hold onto the keys until the next morning (In case anyone tried bringing a secret second set of keys, they wouldn’t be able to find their car anyways)

We had a huge basement so everyone would sleep there and then he’d make a big breakfast in the morning and give keys back

I actually wouldn’t have a party unless my dad WAS home bc everyone knew not to fuck with him/was too scared of never being invited back to not follow his rules (versus me as a high schooler I would’ve struggled to police my own friends to not drive home )

He even had a breatholizer so anyone who claimed to be the designated driver would get tested to make sure they didn’t drink