Millennial Love Story: The graduation party

Meet me on the badminton court.

As we creep closer to warm weather and springtime, I’m nostalgic for all kinds of things. Nothing takes you back to a more carefree version of yourself quite like a world that feels a little more carefree—no matter how briefly or superficially. We’ve arrived in March and I feel myself time traveling to March of 2004 or 2007 or 2008, hungry for arguably the best part of being a non-adult: the summer. Even as a school-loving teacher’s pet, I lived for that moment when we tasted real freedom—and a little touch of spring fever is just the beginning.

Before all of the summer things could begin, though, there was an important ritual to experience, and it’s one that I (clearly) believe deserves some of our attention, even all these years later.

I’d like to talk about the graduation party as a romantic concept.

This is the second piece in a series I debuted a few months ago called Millennial Love Story. Each installment is a personal essay of sorts in which I reflect on a different place that the younger version of me thought was the dreamiest. I can’t wait to share my own memories of these distinctly unromantic settings, as well as the bizarrely romantic value I assigned them in the early aughts. You can read the last essay HERE.

The year is 2007 and I think this is a really cute look for one such graduation party.

Let me just tell you: I wasn’t invited to a lot of parties when I was in high school.

I had a tight-knit little group. We liked to ~hang~ but I don’t think anyone would consider what we did partying. I didn’t drink until the summer before college. My pals and I spent a lot of our time hanging out in the school newspaper office, driving around listening to old music, watching movies in various basements, eating snacks, and awkwardly dividing ourselves by gender for activities like playing pool and board games.

When our group did have parties, it was still pretty wholesome. There were trampolines, badminton nets, waterslides, and maybe an odd cotton candy maker here or there. Plus, more people.

As I aged through high school, I realized that this wasn’t how all social gatherings looked. Over time, my circle expanded, and by the time junior year rolled around, it seemed like all of us were getting invited to parties we wouldn’t have expected to attend as freshmen or sophomores—especially parties of the graduation variety.

It seemed like the end of the school year and the glimmer of whatever was coming next was an equalizer of sorts. We’d all been in it together and we were all entitled to celebrate together.

When I think about the graduation party circuit of my youth (lol), I’m struck by just how much of a thing it was. For weeks on end, it seemed, we were bopping around our sprawling suburb to multiple events per weekend. We spent hours coordinating carpools, outfits, and the cool time to arrive.

Before I really dig into the romance of it all, please allow me a brief digression on the subject of the aforementioned cool time to arrive. This story takes place at my now-husband’s high school graduation party and was—to be clear—not at all romantic.

I was absolutely shocked to be invited to Matt Kosik’s graduation party. Given the fact that—as I’ve already explained—it was part of my enormous school’s culture to be a little more inclusive when it came time for these events, maybe I shouldn’t have been… but I was. (As I’ve established in other posts, he was much cooler than I was in those days.) For one reason or another, I couldn’t carpool with any of my friends (who were probably coming from other parties), so I drove up to the house in my little Jetta and was mortified to learn that I was quite literally the first person there. When you’re seventeen years old, is there anything worse?

To that point, I’d perhaps exchanged a total of 20 words with Matt in the years we’d spent in school together, and it was totally painful for my (at the time, much shyer) self to navigate to a new-to-me backyard, greet family members I’d never met, and try to look like I wasn’t completely humiliated. My primary memory from that day is sitting on the grass by myself while older, more popular kids made their way in. I think Matt and I talked for a little bit, but I honestly couldn’t tell you. I struggled to decide what to write in the guestbook, which was a giant photo of him on the soccer field. As usual (then and now), I left on the early side.

I wonder what that girl would say if she knew that she’d one day be happily married to the guest of honor at that party and that he would eventually know her better than anyone else in the world. I also wish I could tell her to be a little less afraid, that everyone is a little scared and insecure.

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Currently Reading: This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer

I’ll be honest: when I started This Is a Love Story two nights ago, I was having a hard time getting into it. And it’s been getting all the rave reviews and book club shoutouts! I thought I might be missing something, even though the writing is so clearly gorgeous. When I picked the book up again last night, I got into more of a flow. It reads like such a love letter to New York, which pulls on all of the heartstrings from my own NYC days.

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While my own visit to my future husband’s high school graduation party proved absolutely zero percent romantic, I would argue that, on the whole, there was something really dreamy about these gatherings.

Let me explain.

Here’s an exhaustive list of the things that my friends and I found romantic (or at least potentially romantic) about the graduation party circuit:

• We’ll begin with the superficial: the fashion. Graduation parties always happened in perfect timing to test out whatever was cool in the summer ahead (AKA whatever we were seeing on the mannequins in the windows at American Eagle, Aeropostale, and Hollister). Could anything be more romantic—or HOTTER—than a pair of madras Bermuda shorts and a tube top? Obviously not.

• Summer was the season of reinvention. It marked the moment when you could leave behind whoever you’d been in the preceding school year and start again. Whether you were graduating yourself and setting off on a new chapter or simply being promoted to the next grade, you could show up to one of these parties ready to declare yourself in some new way to potential love interests.