I love spending time with my parents. I came home for a weekend and I just wanted to go to dinner and a movie with my mom and dad. I have spent many a high school nights out at the movies with my dad, and it is one of my favorite things to do. I, of course, love going out with friends to do whatever, but there is just something about going with adults that I will always enjoy.

I was back home for Thanksgiving this last week. The first night I was here, most college kids would go and visit their friends at the local college, which for me would be the University of Washington. Instead, I went out to sushi with my parents and a whole lot of adults. It was me, my oldest brother and like four of his friends, and four sets of neighborhood parents. None of these people are even close to my age, but I loved talking about my college life and helping many of them to understand how sorority life works at Santa Clara. The other ingredient in this great time was alcohol. My dad is a large fan of sake, because he can handle a lot of it. I was completely sober, as I should be, but I’ve learned that there’s nothing much more fun than watching all of one’s friend’s parents drunk.

Another example of this great time with intoxicated parents is my parents' annual Christmas party. My neighborhood is not very large, and this party is the event of the season. My parents have been “paying” me to serve and clean this party since about fifth grade. Especially as my older brothers are getting older and able to come and bring friends to this party, it just gets more and more entertaining. Many memorable events have happened while parents are intoxicated. One of the most commonly remembered was the event when a guest of the party dived off of our diving board into an unheated pool in about 50-degree weather. The most recent adventure for this party was my dad’s foray into Jell-O shots. My dad cannot handle a lot of alcohol because of a stomach problem, but he was told Jell-O shots would be OK. Well, he did not do a very good job ratio-wise, and these shots were very strong. This created many intoxicated people very fast. As someone who actually understood what was happening this last year, I had a great time watching people take the Jell-O shots or my dad trying to push the Jell-O shots onto more people, because we had three sheets of Jell-O shots that no one really wanted. It's always fun to watch parents and other adults let loose and have a good time. It's fun to see anyone let loose, but there’s something extra special about watching your friends’ parents who are usually so put together.

Along with liking to watch them intoxicated, I have always preferred talking to adults. My extended family is quite large, and I am on the younger side. This created a small divide in some of the cousins when many were going through puberty and I still wanted to play with my little ponies. In this time, I often ended up talking to my aunts and uncles. I liked talking to them because the conversation felt easy and I didn’t feel pressure to have to seem like any certain person, and could just be myself. This divide between my older and younger cousins has pretty much dissipated, but I still find myself going to the adults to talk first instead of my cousins because I created close bonds with them earlier in my life.

My parents and I are very close, and I hope to always stay that way. I have always been attracted to talking and spending time with adults. I think that it's important to divide the time you spend between your friends and your parents or other adults. There’s a lot you can learn from adults, and I am glad I found that at an early age. I hope that everyone that reads this can find the joy I do in spending time with their parents and building strong relationships with adults.