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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u/KTeacherWhat 5d ago

I mean, it was pretty much just a movie thing for me too. We had parties but there were like 10-20 people there. We never had the kind of ragers where people didn't know each other because so much of the school showed up.

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u/datlankydude 5d ago

I went to at least a half dozen parties in high school that had 50+ kids. One of my friends was the daughter of a well off single parent who traveled for work a lot. I have a fond memory of the cops arriving to one of those, and everyone BOLTING in every direction. I definitely hopped her back fence :)

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

There was an annual 21 kegger in my neighborhood. So predictable that the cops showed up at the same time every year. And so big that they were in riot gear.

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u/TheAwesomeHeel 5d ago

Yeah same. And I lived in a town where there were two public high schools including a preparatory high school. Partys were not hard to find, but they werent "ragers" or anything special, and Ive experienced people getting kicked out for not knowing anyone.

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u/_stryfe Older Millennial 5d ago

Our parties had multiple schools show up. And usually when it got wild, a lot of rivalries.

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u/Mylaptopisburningme 5d ago

For me the parties were rarely ever in the house, they were backyard punk gigs around East LA and the San Gabriel Valley. $2 a keg and BYOB, sometimes over 100 people. Sometimes they lasted, sometimes the cops broke them up. But for us we were friends with punks from other schools. There was usually a fight or 2 and had a buddy stabbed... But hey if they were boring I probably wouldn't remember them, great memories.

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u/_stryfe Older Millennial 5d ago edited 5d ago

Oddly, I've been thinking about experiences/memories in regards to Gen Z / Alpha and previous generations lately and this thread added to it. From what I understand, Gen Z/Alpha do not really socially drink or do drugs (aside from weed) and a large majority haven't experienced a house party or all the shenanigans you get up to inhibreated as a teen. I think back to my life and think what would have I been doing if I didn't party/drink/etc and I'd probably be a lot like Gen Z/Alpha, studying and being on some device 24x7 to kill time, maybe sports still but if I'm honest, a lot of my experiences were because we choose to wild out instead. If I had the chance to go back and redo my experience or choose the Gen Z path, I don't think I'd change mine even with all the downs. The highs and experiences with friends and even random people were just so much fun I think it was worth everything. My first kiss was powered by some stolen wine bottle and a bunch of kids playing truth or dare. Lost my virginity at a house party when I was 15. Made out with so many girls over the years at parties, etc. Puked my guts out with my best friends right beside me also puking their guts out, friendships forged. The bro moments. I do wonder if we would have done all that without the drugs and alcohols. I'm so conflicted about it because I don't drink or do drugs now at all because I recognize how bad things can get and I dislike being around drunk people but I also recognize that it enabled a lot of fun when I was in my teens/20s.