The time has come. You bid all your friends a tearful goodbye because you cannot imagine being without them for seven hours, let alone seven days. You take a crappy flight/train/car ride back home, glaring at any strangers who attempt to make conversation. Look, random 30-year-old dude, it’s great that you love Stanford, but I really just want to sleep. I’m not in the mood to talk to you about how your start-up just received angel investors and is going to revolutionize the cryptocurrency industry or whatever. Stop hitting on me or networking with me or whatever the f*ck you’re trying to do.
If you live in a dorm, arriving home means you get to enjoy your first home-cooked meal in weeks. If you live in an apartment, probably the same because of ~Postmates~. Your mom is probably already yelling at you for not helping out with the dishes (like why do I have chores again?). That’s when your high school group chat starts blowing up with “Oh my god we haven’t seen each other in forever” texts.
All you want to do is watch Netflix and sleep until Thanksgiving comes. However. There’s a plot twist. Somehow, you’ve been coerced into going out. It’s the night before Thanksgiving, the most popular time to see everyone from high school that you were hoping to never see again. (Unless you’re one of those people that goes to college with half of your high school and never makes any new friends, *cough cough* half of my high school.)
You tell your parents you’re going out, and they:
a) Get annoyed because you’re missing out on family time. How could you not want to listen to your dad and grandfather argue about politics? What about a nice game of family Monopoly? Listen, mom, it’s not my fault my friends are forcing me to go out. TBH I would much rather be taking a bath right now and watching Friends for the 400th time, but you can’t have it all
b) Try to institute a curfew, which is weird because you’re used to staying up until 7am without anyone caring. Who the hell is home by midnight anymore? Parties don’t even get fun until 11:30. Time to remind your parents that you’re a legal adult and therefore don’t have to listen to anything they tell you. You then get a whole speech about how they still pay for everything. Therefore you def do have some obligation to listen to them.
c) Remind you to stay safe. Yes, mom, haven’t done this a hundred billion times by now.
After sifting through all your clothes (because you left everything cute at school), you find a decent crop top and your biggest jacket because HOLY SH*T it is freezing outside. You go and meet up at your one friend’s house that is not currently flooded with their entire extended family.
You see all your old friends from high school, which involves lots of hugging and screaming and rapid stories about a bunch of people you don’t know so that you, and everyone else, is clear that their life is amazing. Cue pretending to care about knowing the social hierarchy of all the sororities at your school. Totally not checking Instagram and ignoring you right now.
Now the vodka is starting to hit. This is gonna be a weird f*cking night. You and your friends take a billion photos, which you post to your story mostly because you want people back at college to think you’re actually having fun over the holidays. High school 5ever!
Depending on if you live in a boring town that literally doesn’t have any bars for people under 40 or in an actually exciting city, you head to a house party or a club and prepare yourself to see everyone.
If your high school was anything like mine, all the girls were absurdly tanned, aggressively highlighted, and a ripe five pounds. The boys will inevitably be dressed in high school apparel because you should rep high school forever, obviously. Best time of your life? Right?
Suddenly, EVERYONE is there. Like, why did Alice go that blond, it looks so fake? And Jesus, Nick already has a beer gut…so much for being the star athlete in high school. Every other conversation is “Omigod so good to see you we should get lunch sometime!” Haha, bitch never talking to you again. Time for more photos!
A decent song comes on and you all start dancing. You see a guy from your high school you once were, like, in love with. Then you wonder why because you’d legit never go for him now. Ew, did you even have standards when you were 16? Seriously, who the f*ck were you?
It’s 12am and you find yourself remembering that curfew your mom gave you. You hate following rules, but honestly, everyone is so lame anyway. You accomplished your goal of seeing the two people you still care about from high school.
You hug and lie to everyone that you’ll make plans and hang out soon. Then, you hop in your Uber back home to dream about Thanksgiving. Soon, you will be eating five flavors of pie, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing. You’ll be very happy you’re not wearing a crop top too. By the time you get bored of eating Thanksgiving leftovers (is that even possible though?) you’ll be heading back to your normal life. This weird trip down memory lane will have just been a dream… until winter break when you come home and do it all again.
Images: Giphy (3); Matan Segev/Pexels
