House Parties (or, Advice to All You Sad, Sad Adults)

House parties have always held an air of necessity. Like: we’ve got nowhere cool to go, and no one wants to go out, so let's shove grannie’s head-shot in the top cupboard drawer, right above the stale Lucky Charms, cover the windows with garbage bags, and let a million strangers destroy all our earthly possessions, which come to think of it, sort of aren’t that important anyway. But you know what is important?

Getting sloshed.

I went to a college house party the year after I graduated and decided after about 30 seconds that this sort environment was no longer fun. All the normal methods of lighting an indoor space were cast aside in favor of a cheap plastic disco ball and fake tea lights. At some point, an errant foot had smashed the disco ball and it couldn't spin, it just sat like a fat man on park bench feeding pigeons, and himself, simultaneously.

I was escorted to the basement of this once lovely home, only to sit on a very grey chair that had been green in a previous life, to watch under-developed college boys play beer pong. This lasted maybe a minute before I decided that I needed liquor. I turned to Chase and said, “drink.” Like the chivalrous gentleman he is, he led me upstairs to find “drink.” The party host, who we happened to know in real life, outside of the disco-ball-house-party-hell-hole, opened a huge Tupperware tub (the kind normal humans use to store clothing or, I don’t know, camping supplies), dipped a red solo cup into a liquid pink concoction, and offered me a drink he lovingly called Jungle Juice.

For those of you who don't know, Jungle Juice is a very sweet, very boozy beverage that nobody loves, but nobody hates either. This Jungle Juice recipe is from the infamous Recipes.com so send them a strongly-worded email if you think it's wrong.

Jungle Juice "For a Crowd"

• 2 gallons orange-flavored drink

• 2 (46 fluid ounce) cans fruit punch

• 4 quarts pink lemonade

• 4 quarts pineapple and orange juice blend

• 4 (750 milliliter) bottles vodka

• 2 (750 milliliter) bottles white rum

Jungle Juice in and of itself is fine. Jungle Juice served out of a giant dingy Tupperware clothes storage container gave me the chills. I think I said something like, “we should go.” And go we did, to a bar down the street where people were not wearing bed sheet togas.

That was the exact moment I realized I was old. Not old in that I was finding grey hairs and eating pudding for a lack of teeth, but old in that it was no longer fun for me to wake up hungover and tell all my friends about it as if they would be endlessly impressed.

Of course, not all house parties are as disturbing or unsanitary as the one I just described. I went to a house party for Saint Patrick’s Day with a bunch of late twenty, early thirty-year-old’s, and this was much different because:

1. They brought children

2. No one was hammered and

3. The main topic of conversation was complaining about work.

Shit.

A touch of advice to all the adults out there: stop not having fun. It’s a real drag. Stop doing things you hate just so you can earn a living to live somewhere you hate. And for the love of baby Jesus, stop complaining. The very fact that you’re an adult should indicate that you have some degree of autonomy and can therefore change all the aforementioned things that you hate. And if the thing that you hate is me telling you that you’re miserable, you’re welcome. Someone had to do it.

xoxo

Sarah Rose