If you're the youngest in your friend group, it always feels like you're trying to play catchup. You are usually the last person to experience everything. There is an age when the playing fields are leveled, however, and that magical number is 21. If you're the last one in your friend group to get there, you will probably relate to more than a few things on this list.
1. People you know used to have house parties all the time. When you start to get Facebook invites for 21st birthday parties, this is usually the sign that house parties will become fewer and farther in between.
2 . If you do get invited to a house party you literally recognize no one there.
3. The parties you throw seem to draw less and less of your friends.
4. Your crew still comes to hang out with you, but its more of a pregame scenario. By midnight you're all alone with the two or three people who got too smashed to go downtown.
5. Because you're the only one not going downtown you get stuck cleaning up most of the party mess by yourself.
6. By the time your friends get back from downtown you're usually not on the same level. Meaning you're sobering up and your friends are still having the time of their life. You also have to hear about how great of a time they had for the foreseeable future while you silently wish it was you instead of them.
7. If you do drink too much, you don't have a drunk buddy to wallow in your misery with. What used to be bonding in the bathroom is now a time for solitude, regret, and self loathing.
8. Your friends always blame your actions and choices on your age, but when they make questionable decisions you never judge them for it.
9. See that bottle of wine calling your name while you're grocery shopping? Yeah, too bad you can't just scoop it up and take it home with you. Instead you have to beg one of your friends to go back with you to get it. If they do get it for you, you have to awkwardly leave the store and wait while they're checking out.
10. Your friends make fun of you (in a loving way) for this. This again just makes you feel like a baby.
11. Some friends also get annoyed of buying you booze at a certain point. This means that you usually have to resort to some form of bribery to get alcohol.
12. When you go out to dinner with your friends they all get drinks and you're stuck with water.
13. At most places you can't even enjoy a social drink with your parents.
14. You start to worry about your 21st birthday because all of your friends are gunning for you and talking about how drunk they're going to get you.
15. You can't even count the number of times you've heard "You're not 21 yet?!"
16. You log onto Facebook on Sunday morning to see everyone's fun weekend pictures. All you did was binge watch Netflix and eat junk food.
17. You always miss out on the late night pizza. Then you get to hear about how delicious it was when your roommates get back from their night out.
18. You miss getting dressed up and going out. There really aren't many opportunities or reasons to do it anymore.
19. If your friends are nice and decide to go to a party with you, you just feel bad the whole time because you can tell they're not enjoying it.
20. You also feel guilty when your friends decide not to go out with everyone else to stay back and hang out with you instead.
21. You get made fun of for still having to worry about getting an underage.
Here's to being legal and hoping it's as fun as everyone makes it out to be.
