house party epiphany

i hadn't been to a house party in a long time.

at least until saturday night.

the bar we had watched the "losers' final" was disappointingly un-full, so the next best option was the party.

a friend of a friend of a friend's house.

just off the R21 highway.

a house a trampoline, and bowls of licorice all-sorts. a cooler box filled with sickly sweet alcohol mix, made with sweet-o.

a concentrate mix that comes in a suspiciously small bottle, something i'd compare to dave chapelle's experience of "grape drink".

even a tiny plastic cup, not big enough for beer pong, was enough to make me realize that despite a sporadic appreciation of cake, i don't really have a sweet tooth.

or maybe only a slight one, since i could take on a few fistfuls of all-sorts, conveniently placed in glass bowls throughout the interior brick-walled house.

for a while.

i couldn't resist the tiny shapes of marzipan-like squishiness. the round ones, the 3 or 5 level sandwich ones, and the rare ones that look like thimbles, coated in one shade of tightly packed hundreds and thousands.

they're the ones everyone always eats first. leaving all the un-coated, plain licorice twirls for last. or for whoever actually likes those ones.

it was like a kiddies party, although a slightly undercatered one in comparison to the MSG-fuelled, blood sugar spike binges i remember.

but our behaviour i imagine, besides the consequences, was almost the same.

people spilt on the floor, and danced in it. people sat on the trampoline, and almost broke it.

some consumed too much and felt sick.

there was entertainment, musical-chair-like music that never allowed for a full song.

soccer played on a foozball table, and someone with missing teeth.

conversations with people i almost knew at high school, most of which i enjoyed, but some that i found vaguely disturbing.

instead of talking about whatever we used to talk about, the conversations now revolve more around what we are doing. or not doing.

complaints of unemployment, or of being too busy.

sometimes the conversation even requires only one person and an audience. monologues that i'm sure are intended to show off intellectual aptitude, but don't really make any sense.

maybe we're all just children really, that all this discourse on "growing up" is really just a lie, a way of retaining some benchmark/control over the way people behave.

even professional footballers, so admired and idolised, still throw down balls in anger when things don't go their way, or cry when they lose.

behind the facade of success, education and even life experience, i think on some level we all just unsatisfied kids, throwing parties to distract ourselves from responsibility.

to give ourselves an opportunity to experience a supposed care-free life, with the help of substances in varying strengths, taken down with the proverbial spoon full of sugar, or preservatives.

i imagine that if we could remember all the silly playground squabbles, the jealously, the occasional lies, we'd think differently about our romanticised childhoods.

i think we do all the same things, we just learn how to do them better, and hope that eventually we're considered better at it than someone else.

i do hope that i have grown up in some ways though. things, after all have changed slightly.

i can go where i want to now, until late, and swear in front of my parents without the threat of a wooden spoon.

i'm now no longer dependent on the company of ellie, the once fluffy green elephant, the one i couldn't go anywhere without. the one i made my family search for on more than one occasion to end a desperate tantrum.

the only difference is that now, after indulging in colourful drinks and sweets, i have to get myself home.