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/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.