Millennial Love Story: Wing Night

I'll take a side of ranch and romantic possibility, please.

Every couple of months, I decide that I need a plate of wings.

I don’t like ‘em super spicy or overly buffalo sauce forward. Generally, I look for a sauce with a name along the lines of “sweet and sweaty” or “hot and honey.” I don’t need that many—in fact, I generally top out after about five. But when I crave them, I really crave them.

To a certain degree, yes, this is about wanting to take a bite of a saucy chicken wing.

But it’s actually bigger than that.

And if you’re a millennial like I am who came of age in Wing Night culture, I’m sure you’ll agree that craving an order of wings is really an emotional experience more than anything else.

It’s nostalgia at its sweetest. And sweatiest.

Here we are with another installment of the Millennial Love Story series. Each one 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.

First, a definition of Wing Night: it was quite literally just the night of the week when all orders of wings were half off their usual price. The luxury! The glamour! Our local spot was a place called P.J. Whelihan’s (delectable wings pictured above). There were a couple of locations, and each of the nearby high schools had its own designated turf. If the line was long at your P.J.’s (and it usually was), you did not dare leave and go to another one. You waited. The waiting was, in fact, sort of the point. That’s where you got to watch all the comings and goings and catch up with friends. Once inside—with the low lights and sticky floors and tables so crammed you were almost always rubbing arms with at least one of your friends—it was all business: wings.

I’d been hearing about Wing Night for many years before I was actually invited to it. Invited into it might be the better way to describe that experience. Where I grew up, it really was a rite of passage.

The older kids in the activities I was involved in talked about it. I remember those conversations in hushed tones, though they were probably at a perfectly normal volume. Kids who could drive went to Wing Night. Kids who had freedom went to Wing Night. Kids who had whole lives and societies together but also outside of school went to Wing Night. Things happened at Wing Night.

As far as I could tell—and as far as I can remember now—attendance at Wing Night was reserved primarily for people who had their driver’s licenses. It just wasn’t something that your parents took you to. Don’t ask me why because I didn’t make the rules. Because of this unspoken qualifiera, Wing Night really was something to which you eventually ascended when you—or at least a bunch of your friends—had your own form of transportation. P.J.’s wasn’t asking for IDs or inquiring about your graduation year, but it really was a thing for upperclassmen. Unless you were a really cool freshman or sophomore.

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Currently Reading: The Other Lata by Kirthana Ramisetti

This is a delicious romp, perfect for all of my grown-up Gossip Girl fans! I’ve been flying through it and can’t recommend it enough for summer reading. Read it, read it, read it!

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Even once you crossed the line into junior year, Wing Night wasn’t really a given. Well, it wasn’t a given for me. I’ve written in the past about my personal experiences with coolness and popularity so I won’t bore you unnecessarily. Suffice it to say that I was super involved and probably fairly well-liked, and yet often felt on the fringes of life in my adolescent community. Truthfully, I probably held myself back from a lot of social experiences—including, perhaps, Wing Night.

What I learned about coolness from a fishing trip

Some of my friends started attending Wing Night when we were juniors, but I was slow to get involved. I was one of the last in our group to get my driver’s license and hated the feeling of asking for rides all the time. Plus, I… didn’t really like wings that much. But a girl can only tolerate hearing the murmurs so much before she has to give it a shot herself.

I realized quickly that Wing Night was a place where so many of the things that seemed to divide us went away. It flattened the popularity curve. No one got to skip a line, everyone’s table was shitty, and all of our money went exactly the same distance. It was the great equalizer. I’m not suggesting that it’s the solution to world peace or anything, but at the time, it felt kind of transformative.

It also felt like a place where love could blossom.

It was a place where you might run into your crush, even if you wouldn’t normally find yourself sharing air with them outside of school. And because the waiting and the shitty tables and the, well, wings were inevitable for everyone, it somehow felt like a space of social and romantic possibility.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s entirely true. Which was why what you wore to Wing Night was very important.

There was this one Express zip-up that meant a lot to me.