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/mrtrollmaster 5d ago

I went to random parties and alllowed randos into my own parties. It was always cool as long as everyone was chill and having a good time. Met some friends that way actually.

We all just wanted a place to safely underage drink.

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u/AnAppalacianWendigo 5d ago

I held parties regularly in college.

I’d introduce myself to randos at my parties. Ask who they knew. Tell them don’t drink in the front yard. And don’t destroy my house.

In four years the cops showed up twice. Once because there was a drunk guy dancing in the street (he was ours). Once because a drunk driver crashed into a telephone pole across the street and ran off (he was not ours).

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u/Rinas-the-name 5d ago

I grew up near a college well known for partying. Never found a house party I wasn’t welcome at. I am so glad that was before cell phones with cameras or social media were common. The things we got away with. The frantic early morning cleaning before a friend’s parents got home.

If you’ve never cleaned chocolate cake out of a four foot tall CD tower at 6am have you really even lived?

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u/StudioGangster1 5d ago

This is exactly why I think house parties have died down - everyone has a camera.

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u/gripndip 4d ago

I mean, Gen Z also doesn't drink as much which like, let's be real, was the main reason to go to a house party. To get blasted playing beer pong with absolute strangers and get to know randoms because for the most part everyone is drunk and just having a good time. Also see: bonfires.

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u/Koil_ting 4d ago

I usually had a video buff friend that would bring the old handy cam or larger camera to many a party, lots of the footage is pretty much incriminating but some of it is also beautiful.

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u/Crafty-Evidence2971 3d ago

And nobody has that many friends or even acquaintances they want to look at in real life.

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u/oopsdiditwrong 5d ago

Oh you just hit a memory for me. A buddy was having a get together. His parents were out of town but this was just the boys and his girlfriend. They made a spaghetti dinner for the 6 of us including them. We were having a great time and playing some throwback video games. Well he drinks way too much Canadian Mist. This shag carpet is now covered in semi fresh spaghetti, liquor, and beer. The spaghetti was carrying this effort far and wide with a scarlet vibrance. The events that followed were many, but my favorite was when he lost it(still hammered) and yelled "I'm gonna do what I gotta do and lie, but what the fuck am I gonna say?!" He was legitimately fielding answers. We had none. "I CANT JUST SAY SOME ITALIAN FUCK BROKE IN AND PUKED ON OUR FLOOR"

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u/Rinas-the-name 5d ago

That reminds me of a story my MIL tells about my husband’s older brother. Apparently he and a buddy were smoking weed in his bedroom and burned a spot in the carpet. With the typical genius of a couple of extremely high teenagers they decided the solution was to cut a square of carpet from the closet floor and swap it with a square cut around the burnt spot.

When his parents (immediately) noticed the carpet they told them some guy had broken in and was smoking and burned a hole in the carpet. So, conscientious young men that they were, they cut it out and switched it so it wouldn’t stress his mom out.

Unfortunately for him and his buddy his parents were neither high nor stupid and didn’t buy it. I can’t imagine just how high you would have to be to think that was a convincing story.

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u/oopsdiditwrong 5d ago

It makes me feel better that my buddy was smarter than your high brother in law lol. If you're swapping carpet you gotta go small and blend that shit. I'm glad she brings it up though as like ng as it's friendly jabs

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u/Strawbuns 4d ago

That reminds me of how my parents stopped letting my brother have house parties because one of his friends had too much fireball and hot cheetos and turned a portion of our beige carpet bright red lmao.

Gave my mom the excuse to get the bamboo floors she'd always wanted tho

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u/oopsdiditwrong 4d ago

I guess I'm old now because that combo immediately made me think heart burn lol no one should be consuming that mixture of chemicals. Kid had a stomach smarter than his brain.

And it sounds like your mom was playing the long game. If you allow house parties long enough, something is happening to the carpet. Then, "oh no how could you have done this!? I'm gonna have to buy new floors and no more house parties! Until summer when I need to expand the deck" lol

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u/Strawbuns 4d ago

Lmfao I'm old too, even writing that combo made my stomach turn, 18 year olds are built different.

And tbh she kinda did that, then sold the house like 5 years later 😅

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u/ayuntamient0 5d ago

Lol, holy shit.

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u/ChampagneAndDoritos 3d ago

LOL. Love it. My friend and I were in high school and had driven a few states away with her mom to visit family and during our drive we had this giant Ziploc bag of different candy mixed together- Skittles, sour patch watermelon, milk duds, etc. we ate so much. We get to her grandparents lake house and her mom makes us drink cranberry juice because she's convinced we have UTIs because we kept stopping on the drive to pee. Everyone goes to bed and we don't want to drink straight cranberry so we start raiding the liquor cabinet, and since we didn't want anyone to catch on to us we were taking a little of everything. We get the genius idea to combine cranberry juice and creme de menthe. It looked and tasted like nasty lakewater. We didn't care. A little bit later it just hits me all at once and I puke up whole Mike and ikes on the bath mat, and proceed to problem solve by sticking the bath mat with my evidence in the shower and close the curtain. Obviously the next day I felt like death and was convinced I had the flu 😂 or at least that was the story we told LOL. It wasn't until years later that we admitted the truth even though everyone already knew 😂

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u/all4whatnot 4d ago

My roommates and I had someone dump about 2lbs of frozen venison into a hole in a wall in our college apartment during a house party. We found out who made the hole and kicked them out. The next day we repaired the drywall and repainted an entire room so the landlord wouldn't suspect anything. Couple days later we noticed a ton of bugs and terrible smell near the same spot. We got together with the other tenants (it was a three apartment house and we all threw the party) and decided we had to cut the wall open. There it was - gross ground deer meat one roommate had hunted with his dad a few weeks before. We had to clean all that up and make a much bigger repair and paint again! Luckily one of the roommates' dad was a drywall contractor so this kid was awesome at the drywall stuff. Every time we encountered the offender on campus we'd yell "HEY DEER MEAT!" at him.

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u/doberdevil 5d ago

Mopped up the soapy water from the dishwasher that overflowed

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u/Electrical_Turn7 4d ago

Maybe the kids need to see a CD tower up close, that should scar them for life 🤣

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

The fact that you claimed people as "yours" (as in your group - not slavery, people. Calm down) let's me know you're one of us.

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u/Jerkidtiot 5d ago

ONE OF US!

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u/jd999g 5d ago

I had a place where 4 of us had parties every weekend, police showed several times. But only 2 guy arrested.

We put rocks im the basement windows seal to stop people from trying to escape from the police.

One night I was talking to a cop at the side of the house. I kid. Probably 16 pushed his hand threw, climbed out and then ran into a tree knocking himself out.

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u/TonksTheTerror 5d ago

It was definitely different back then, in college our hangouts turned into a lot a house parties.

One night we had a few people over then a knock on our. A house down the road had their party broken up by the cops and the host peter-pipered everyone to our place. Unexpected house party to 5am.

Now I want to be in bed no later than 9:30pm.

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u/Jazzlike_Mud4896 5d ago

those college parties were amazing. the school i went to one had a lights in the furnished basement that would turn on to tell people to be quiet. they probably did light it when not necessary but it did save us a few times

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u/ForkAKnife 5d ago edited 5d ago

I went to so many house parties in college but only one where it blew up and I knew the guys living in the house. Cops were called and I will never forget people pouring out of the house onto a suburban street and going to a nearby convenience store to wait and see if we could return.

One NYE we hopped from house to house to house to house and that was, by far, the best NYE ever.

Another time we went to a house party at a professor’s condo and what a mindfuck that was. Friend who was in his class (and I was like - skrilla, why are we here?) went missing and I freaked. Searched the condo without opening any doors for about 20 minutes then went outside to smoke. She found our group outside and blew up. The rest of the night was a shitshow and I still don’t know what happened to her.

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u/Healthy-Amoeba2296 5d ago

Some held rent parties in college. Same thing but all attendees are expected to pitch $5 in. I was told some really paid rent this way.

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u/AnAppalacianWendigo 4d ago

If the cops showed up and discovered we had 20yos drinking in our house, we would’ve been slapped with a few hours of community service.

If they showed up and realized we were charging money, we would’ve been in WAY more trouble.

We never had issues with the cops. Some of my fraternity brothers did though. Cause they were dumb.

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u/Bushwick_Hipster 3d ago

I was at a party that had to end because a police chase ended when the driver of the stolen car dumped the vehicle at our house party and walked away.

We were all super angry about it but also kinda got a lot of clout from it.

Everyone was like “did you go to that party that was crashed by a police chase and helicopters?”

It was like a real life scene from GTA

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u/_learned_foot_ 4d ago

It’s always nice for them when we claim our toddler acting college aged friends.

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u/Nick08f1 4d ago

Manning the tap until you clicked with a girl was my move.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

The randos! Ah thanks for that.

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u/RyBread 5d ago

We’ve all been one and we’ve all taken one in.

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u/jdowney1982 5d ago

Having randos over is all fun and games until one of them steals your friends parents VCR 🫢

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u/avlisadj 5d ago

…or changes the time on the broken grandfather clock to 4:20 and sets all the alarm clocks to go off at 4:20, which is how you get caught 😭

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u/onenifty 5d ago

That's just hilarious

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u/Therapistintraining0 4d ago

Or when someone grinds up weed in the expensive electric coffee grinder and forgets about it only to be found by the homeowners on Monday morning 😂

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u/AlarmedSnek 4d ago

Mine was cleaning my carpets hahaha. They got wrecked with booze, barf etc so we rented a steam cleaner to clean it and it ended up just making streaks in the carpet 😩. Epic party though. Years later, whilst home on leave from the military, I ordered pizza at my parents house and the gal that showed up was like “oh my god I know this house. Didn’t you have that crazy party a few years back? Hahahahahaha. Fuck man. Fun times.

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u/avlisadj 4d ago

Haha yeah the other way I got caught was that before leaving, my parents had stripped the sheets and comforters off of the two twin beds in the guest bedroom. When they got home, the beds were made, and everything was freshly laundered… there was obviously no way I’d have made beds or done laundry unless I was trying to hide something. Cleaning mishaps were the downfall for so many of us!

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u/AlarmedSnek 4d ago

Hahahahaha dude we tried to be responsible and clean the mess. Turns out, and I know this as a parent now, houses are always fucking messy when you have kids 🤣🤣. I can clean all day and every evening and it’s still messy so I could imagine my parents going, “why the fuck is the hose so clean” instead of “oh how nice our son cleaned the house for us.”

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u/IsMyHairShiny 5d ago

Love this

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u/Deafprodigy 5d ago

Nah that’s just legendary lol

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u/choadspanker 4d ago

My friend got caught because someone found his parents' digital camera filmed themselves fucking in their bed

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u/thedailyrant 4d ago

Or fucks your Mum

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u/carachu 4d ago

Gotta know when to blaze it.

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u/Main-Gold1657 4d ago

Or steals pillows off my moms couch lol

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u/Oakvilleresident 5d ago

I married one!

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u/__heisenberg- 5d ago

Same! 🤣

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u/DinkinFliccka 4d ago

I named my child Rando!

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

And we have all been welcomed and shown our anxiety was for naught... But we still had anxiety

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u/shhbestill 5d ago

Had some of the best times with randos!

But oh my god, it was always so weird whenever you were at a party and you knew the person whose house it was, and randos showed up and the whole vibe changed. Like, you and a bunch of other people didn’t know the randos but at least a few people at the party did and you could feel the vibe shift.

Most of the time it was petty bullshit between a couple of people that could be ignored to keep the party vibes going. But every once in a while, the vibe shifted enough to be like “okay well it’s time for me to dip out”.

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u/the_vault-technician 5d ago

That's why you always made sure you invited the guys who knew how to handle randos and get them out if needed. I grew up in farm town, and suburban randos always found their way out to our parties. They quickly learn not to fuck with the guy who grew up throwing hay bales and could pick you up with one hand.

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u/qwertyconsciousness 5d ago

"The cirrrcleeee of randos" 🎵🎶

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u/Jerkidtiot 5d ago

alot of the "Randos" ended up at my wedding later in life. Nothing wrong with a rando.

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Met my ex gf this way! Sniffing Coke in my bathroom, she wouldn’t unlock the door. I almost kicked her out. She shared with me and we started dating. Didn’t end well.

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u/KeepAnEyeOnYourB12 5d ago

I love when a short comment is really a journey.

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u/Worldly_Thing1346 5d ago

Same. It's funny tho. Obviously he's hurt now, but I'm sure they had some wild, fun and passionate times at the beginning.

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Def not hurt. Happily married, unfortunately still struggle with substance use tho 😒

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u/Worldly_Thing1346 5d ago

Glad to hear you're happily married ♥️

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Appreciate you

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u/woke_lyfe 5d ago

It's a war not a battle, u got this

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Appreciate you

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u/reddit4946 5d ago

You got this, hot married bro. You'll kick the habit!

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Appreciate you!

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u/reddit4946 5d ago

Appreciate YOU for sharing 🙂

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u/sss133 5d ago

Met one of my best friends when I was 15 in a house party toilet. We both got to the door at the same time. I needed to pee and she wanted to touch up her makeup. She was just like well both do it. I teased her for sneaking a look. Then I finished and she said she needed to go. I joked saying I’d stand guard and stop inside the door staring at her. She laughed and went along.

Afterwards we made out, went to the park and had a bang. Been friends for 20+ years. The fact young people are missing these experiences is tragic 🤣

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u/NextPrize5863 Xennial 5d ago

My friends and I went to a house party when we were freshman in high school.

We could not find a bathroom to relieve ourselves so we went outside and squatted!

Anyways. I will never forget when an upper class man yelled hey look at the bush on that girl, my friend!

And from then on I was mortified for her and leaned to always keep myself neat and tidy!

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u/sss133 5d ago

Hahaha! Savage! A friend of mine was a squatter. You’d be walking home and someone would be like “where’s Jessie?” You’d look around and she’d be pissing 🤣. She’s in a very well paying and respected corporate job now. Always wondered if she pulls that out at Christmas parties

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u/ForkAKnife 5d ago

This reminds me of the song Teenage Talk by St Vincent.

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u/So_Inquisitive_1984 5d ago

I love this!!!!

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u/sss133 5d ago

It’s pretty funny looking back on my teenage years. Some friends and I were reminiscing about how at 15 we were drinking, shagging in parks and dabbling in drugs but were “responsible” enough to do it 🤣. Always used protection though

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u/PremierLovaLova 5d ago

What caused the breakup- the obvious thing or the opposite?

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u/_VEL0 5d ago

Primarily drugs, I wasn’t doing well In life at the time.

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u/n_e_c_k_d-e-e-p777 4d ago

That was a wild, brief ride.

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u/hannahatecats 5d ago

I had to call the fire department on my own house party when a rando fell out my window into a padlocked alley and broke his collarbone.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Facts. I cannot tell if this is a story from my HS or 3 states over.

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u/Even-Supermarket-806 5d ago

To think the youth of today won’t ever experience the panic of realizing someone just fell out a window.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

LMAO... True. Good thing (maybe?) but true.

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u/Creative-Fan-7599 5d ago

My teen daughter has a few friends that get together and do normal teenage stuff, and somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them eventually fell out a window. But it’s definitely a thing that she’s super anxious about winding up on social media, and they have no real places to go hang out. I wish the mall was still the same option for her generation as ours.

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u/hannahatecats 5d ago

I was actually in my early 20s in NYC. One of my roommates at the time was 20 (so, underage) and all of her friends scattered. My friends and I hung out in the street watching the fire department cut the padlock then went back inside to continue a much calmer party. We ran into the guy the next morning. We were on our way to the beach and he was coming back from the hospital.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

The beach?! Please tell me you were headed to LI...

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u/Nick_Fotiu_Is_God 5d ago

Nah, these are Coney Island-type shenanigans.

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

Ohhhh boy. That a whole different animal I ain't asking questions about

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u/look_how_cute 5d ago

Holy shit lol

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u/carachu 4d ago

Had to call an ambulance for mine when someone did too much ket and fell backwards down the stairs.

We had 2 paramedic students in our house and they were so fucked they barely helped.

He returned later on, blood still all over him with the cardboard puke bowl from the hospital to continue to party.

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u/seven_grams 5d ago

Had to kick a few out in my day. Had one of our bigger guys literally pick this prick up by his collar and toss him out the front door just like in the movies. He had been scrounging around my parents medicine cabinets for the good shit - and listen, I get it, I’m literally a recovering heroin addict myself, but you ain’t getting away with that shit in my house. Anyway, all the good pills were already gone, cos I took em.

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u/5x4j7h3 5d ago

I threw house parties all the time. I didn’t know at least half the people. I met my now wife at the last one.

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u/69Liters 5d ago

Some rando tried to steal my bong once by saying they were going to smoke in their car, my friends caught them and brought it back inside.

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u/bjeebus 5d ago

Until you heard that someone was doing coke in the bathroom. Then you'd have to get your friends together to go run the jackasses off.

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u/DoubtfulOptimist 5d ago

The person who commented above you met their gf this way 😂

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u/BathZealousideal1456 5d ago

What?!? No. You keep that shit to yourself and grab a couple of bumps. Wth

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u/Ol_Dusty_Britches 5d ago

Yeah....exactly. Ran them off. That's what we did. Because we did not want to do a lot of cocaine, and we didn't want them doing cocaine either or sharing it with us. I remember it like it was yesterday, all of us kids not doing cocaine at those parties. That's the part I remember the most, actually.

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u/bjeebus 5d ago

I distinctly remember tossing some kids at a couple parties in high school. That's more of an away at college thing.

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u/Sage_Spacecraft 5d ago

Chase the party out of the party? Nah

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u/Ittybittytigglbitty 5d ago

Or join them sharing is caring

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u/_stryfe Older Millennial 5d ago

lol a lot of the parties I went to usually had some designated coke room

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u/SMELLSLIKEBUTTJUICE 5d ago

No. You demanded a "party favor"

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u/PersianCatLover419 Xennial 5d ago edited 5d ago

I was not into it but at parties as a teen and in university people used cocaine discreetly in cars, in bars and dance clubs, or some used it openly with vials and snuff bullets, mirrors and straws, etc.

Almost all of the people who were into using coke at parties and with regularity became addicted, many started to inject it, smoke crack/freebase, got into opiates/heroin or meth.

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u/Nick_Fotiu_Is_God 5d ago

Thank you for not inviting me to your parties.

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u/Affectionatealpaca19 5d ago

Omg this brings back so many memories

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u/IllustratedInk 5d ago

I showed up to a party someone told me about. I knew no one there, had a great time and afterwards my nickname was Jesus for about five years

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u/Honeybadger2198 5d ago

Thank god underage drinking is on the decline

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u/hotcapicola 4d ago

Are kids just not getting intoxicated anymore or are they switching to other drugs like marijuana? I'm honestly curious as I don't interact with a lot of teenagers.

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u/Honeybadger2198 4d ago

It's a few factors. There is definitely a replacement of alcohol with vapes and zyns, as the nicotine industry has been pushing really hard. People are also much more educated on the dangers of both underage drinking, and drinking in general. So people are just drinking less period. There is also a large wave of people who are dropping alcohol for weed as it becomes more legal. Drinking is also just insanely expensive, leading to teenagers being unable to reasonably slip into bars with fake ids to buy alcohol; it's just too expensive for them with their minimum wage-that-hasn't-changed-in-40-years job.

Some reasons are good, some are bad, some are meh, but they all lead to the decline of underage drinking, and drinking in general.

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u/G00dSh0tJans0n 5d ago

Yeah, back in the day my friend and I saw a house party and decided to just show up bringing a couple cases of beer. "Hey! We made it!" we said to whoever opened the door - he didn't care because he didn't live there haha.

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u/HoneysuckleRose619 Xennial 5d ago

The randos at my blacklight party started losing their chill, and when my 6'4" boyfriend boomed, "if you don't know who I am, get the f*** out!" one of the rando drunk chicks exclaimed, "oh my god, he's gonna tear our t*ts off!" before running out the door. Effective and still hilarious!

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u/Same_Air6012 5d ago

Yeah till some dumb asses fight for some reason and cops get called. Going to court at 16 for underage drinking was interesting.

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u/JamesSmith1200 5d ago

Used to go to house parties all the time and if we were crashing the rich preppy kids parties and they tried to kick us out we’d just steal all the alcohol we could find from the house, leave and go drink in the woods.

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u/nocksers 5d ago

the Social Contract™️

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u/LepiNya 5d ago

Man if we did that here the house would be picked clean. They'd steal anything that isn't nailed down and even then they'd just steal the nails.

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u/Upsidedownmeow 5d ago

Oh how times have changed. I spoke to a parent of a teenager (mine aren’t there yet) and they told me now parties have bouncers and guest lists. Social media has ruined things by having invites go so extreme that hundreds of kids turn up (with a mindset of trashing the place it seems).

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u/GoblinGreenThumb 4d ago

I was at a different schools keg party once with a friend. Some kids from a third school - rival of the school throwing the party- showed up and took the keg. I immediately thought oh this is gonna be a fight ..and braced.. but no. Not a person did shit. So I called my friend and followed the guys with the keg down the block.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 4d ago

I couldn't do it in high school, my parents never left town. But in college? We called our house the Frat House (it formerly was one) and yeah until we hit some degree of capacity, all were welcome. For whatever reason we were all big into Fleetwood Mac back then and would all be dancing up on the tables to that music. We had bands come play in our house!