*This article does not represent the views of Her Campus FSU.
Let me preface this article by saying I will never bring my parents to a party again. That being said, I totally get tailgating with the ‘rents before a football game, toasting to a new year, or anything in between, but that just isn’t my cup of tea anymore. In honor of the two year anniversary of the fateful night, buckle up and join me in unburying memories of the time I thought bringing my parents to a party would end up as anything other than a humiliating and terrible experience.
My parents have a tendency to “surprise me” by just showing up at my door in the Nasty from time to time. They call the visits their version of welfare checks, which generally consist of filling my stomach with “real” food, buying me some clothes and stocking my apartment with ramen and snacks before heading out. I got a text from them on the day of a huge frat party that my roommates and I were planning on going to that my parents were planning on being in town within the hour.
Enter: panic mode.
I started to call my roommates about my parents coming in and about how I didn’t know how to balance them and the plans we had in store for the night. We talked about cancelling our plans when one of my roommates (let’s call her Melanie) cut in and told us that she really needed to get out. Melanie’s boyfriend had just broken up with her a couple of days prior and had, justifiably, left her in a bit of a funk. So, after talking to my parents, we decided that my parents would be joining in on our festivities for the night (mistake numero uno).
Of course, my father was excited. Going to a frat party would be a perfect way to relive the glory days. He even stopped by ABC Liquors and bought a fairly expensive bottle of hooch to bring. My mother, on the other hand, was nervous. What if we got separated? What if everyone got too drunk? Isn’t weird bringing your parents to a party? My brother, who also went to FSU, decided to come because he was pretty sure this would be the only time he’d ever see his parents at a college party (boy, was he right).
I wanted to be there for Melanie, but I was feeling a bit uncomfortable about my parents coming, so I decided to only stay for about an hour with my parents on the sidelines of the party, and then head out to spend the night with them. Or, at least, that was the plan.
Courtesy: YouTube
When we arrived my dad, apparently incapable of understanding what “side line” meant, walked straight into a pit of people strewn across the front steps and the driveway and right on into the garage.
“Does anybody want a shot?” he asked.
Mortified, yet intrigued, I watched as he let a couple of my friends (all of drinking age, of course) down some shots straight from the bottle. In return, someone offered him a hollowed out flamingo lawn ornament filled to the brim with beer to chug. Getting on one knee, he glugged down the flamingo booze like a pro. Not to be outdone (and frankly wanting to take some of the edge off), I followed suit. A few more rounds of alcohol later, my dad, brother and I were fairly boozed up and my mother was trying to have fun but was obviously very uncomfortable with the whole situation.
Then, my roommates arrived. They had been pregaming at our apartment and were already pretty gone, especially Melanie. She started out as the happy drunk. She was skipping on the street, telling us how much she loved us, singing and dancing. Then she took a sudden turn. Melanie went from singing a love song to my roommate to crumpling up on the ground and screaming “why doesn’t he love me?”
She started grabbing my brother and telling us that she thought my brother liked her (he wasn’t paying any attention to her, honestly) and became angry when he shrugged her off. Declaring that she needed to pee, Melanie stormed up the stairs to go to the bathroom. I followed her and waited outside the bathroom for quite a while before I heard a loud thump against the door. I began to knock and ask Melanie if she was okay. When I didn’t get a response, I jammed the door open and found Melanie passed out on the floor with her skirt around her ankles. I quickly called my roommates to help and soon enough the tiny bathroom was crammed with all of our apartment’s residents in it. We put her back together, wiped away her tears and tried to get her to respond to us with very minimal results.
Courtesy: Auto Evolution
We knew she had to go home, so we called our friend who was a designated driver that night to come get us so we could put her to bed. I began to carry Melanie down the stairs and almost made it to the bottom when Melanie passed out completely, dragging both of us down into the grass in front of everyone at the party, including my parents. So there I was, covered in muck and kneeling over my passed out roommate in front of everyone, not knowing what the hell to do.
One of the other party guests, who was training to be a nurse, luckily knew how to recognize the signs of alcohol poisoning and called an ambulance. Soon enough, an ambulance, a firetruck, three police cars and dozens of abandoned drinks were scattered across the yard. People scattered and police began to question those who remained. My roommates and I determined who was the most sober to ride in the ambulance with Melanie. It looked like we were all going to the hospital that night.
My mom told me and my other roommate that she was going to bring us to the hospital. She didn’t want Melanie all alone there without a parental figure present. The entire ride there we got a lecture on alcohol use and how to drink responsibly. Once we got to Melanie’s room I tried to get her to tell me her phone’s password so I could call her mom, but she wasn’t conscious enough to tell me what it was. I then called my RA to ask him for any of her emergency contacts he might have on hand for her, but all I got was a “I’m too high for this” response (substandard material for an RA, might I add).
So there we were: Melanie hooked up to an IV, my roommates and I drunk and crying on the floor of a hospital bathroom, my parents furious and anxious and everyone else upset that the party got crashed and split up.
The next day, I woke up to dozens of texts asking what the scoop was with my roommate, my parents and everything else that went down the night before. The truth was that my roommate had taken antidepressants without telling us and drank on top of them, which is ultimately what led to her passing out. She spent a few more days in the hospital Baker Acted after becoming violent with a nurse. We spent a week without her around and one day we came home to a single trunk in the middle of our living room. She had pulled herself out of FSU.
Now, Melanie is doing great. She found what she wants to do and where she wants to be in the world. I couldn’t be happier for her. Melanie says that the situation taught her a lot of lessons about drug abuse (whether unintentional or not), drinking limits and, most importantly, about how her self-worth isn’t measured by what one person thinks. I learned a few lessons that night too. I learned to recognize the signs of someone becoming too drunk or drugged for their safety. I learned that it didn’t matter what everyone thought of me at the party, it only mattered that my friend was ok. And finally, I learned that I would never take my parents to a party ever again. You can be in control of yourself when drinking, but you cannot control how others act. If you yourself think it’s perfectly fine to drink with your parents, so be it, but use caution when deciding to take them somewhere where other people may leave a negative and lasting impression.