Once upon a Sunday afternoon, I was invited to a birthday party for my dearest friend Rachelle— we used to work at the public library together. It was a particularly exciting day because I was going to party with grown ups for the first time. Sure, I’ve been at parties with grown ups, but this time I was actually going to be partying with them. Totally different things. It was a small, casual party at a lovely apartment in a suburb of the Twin Cities, and obviously only cool people were going to be there. Rachelle was celebrating her 24th birthday, and everyone else was 24 and up. Me being the 18-year-old, I was slightly nervous about not fitting in. After all, how was I going to fit in with a group of nurses, dental and law school students, and people finishing up their degrees when I had just started college?
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| Our homemade spring roll station. Photo taken by Rachelle. Cuz she's so cool. |
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| Photo taken by Rachelle. |
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| Me accidentally photobombing. Photo taken by Rachelle. More photos in the Midwest Argonaut Volume 4. |
But add a spring roll station, homemade dipping sauce, and Rachelle’s famous naanza (it’s basically pizza but with Indian naan bread), and I find that it’s not too difficult casually mingling with adults. Sure, I couldn’t totally relate to grad school or career anecdotes, and sure, I was called a baby a few times, but it was cool. I even got to lament about roommate problems, dining hall food, and weird college experiences every now and then. I even learned a few things: being a nurse is the thug life, grad school is miserable, and being an unmarried 30-year-old woman is cooler than people think, contrary to the popular belief that you should be married by your mid twenties. I even learned that philosopher mood swings are a real thing (there was a guy that showed up four hours late because he was having a philosopher mood swing).
More importantly, I learned that grown ups are really just big kids, and charades is a big deal. I played the most intense game of charades of my life that day, and I have no regrets. I have never met people so enthusiastic about charades, and I have never met people so good at it. I learned all about the gestures for syllables and genres and genders, how to set up a scene to act out things like siphoning gas, how to break up phrases into words, and acting out things that sound like the answers. I witnessed a man act out existential crisis and OBGYN. International relations was another notable one. So was Memory Lane.
At one point Rachelle got up and before she even started, Mitchell exclaimed, “Orgasm, diarrhea, constipation!”
“How did you know?”
“We’ve never had a game of charades without at least one of those words,” Mitchell replied matter-of-factly.
Overall, it was a really neat experience and I had a great deal of fun. In a weird way, my experience partying with grown ups made me dread adulthood less. Sure, you have to deal with paying bills, loan debt, and rent; you’re probably in more of an existential vacuum once you leave college and it’s probably weird seeing all your friends get married off, but you can still do your own thang, have fun, and not worry about parental consent. I like to think that you get to decide how you age; you can either age like wine, or age like a carton of milk. And I’d prefer to age like wine.
