There’s a Place For Everyone
I know of a place; more so a kind of place, where you can find every type of person. You witness people that are loud, quiet, outgoing, boring, crazy, normal, lazy, active, funny, weird, or cool. You will spot humans of all different shape, size, ethnicity and gender and age. This location has complete diversity, it has a place for everyone. This drew me in because of how unexpected and different it can be.
My chosen location can sometime be filled with inhabitants and sometimes nearly empty. The environment there can be crazy but sometimes laid back. The place can be at a house at a park or at just about any venue. You go to these places to celebrate things like birthdays graduations and sometimes just to celebrate the end of the week! If you haven't guessed this “place” is a party! So let the fun begin!
I almost always opt to be the DD (designated driver) whenever my friends choose to go out to a party. The past couple times I did this were a little different though, as I hung out with my friends I payed a little closer attention to my surroundings. I noticed a lot of things I had never stopped to think or care about. My observations ended up being quite interesting.
Night one of observation was a saturday night the fourth of September. Everyone hopped on into my car and the night officially began. We started off the night at the “Baseball House”. We walked in and you were instantly hit by an awful scent. As the night went on I thought I would eventually get used to this horrible odor, but unfortunately that never happened. Another observation I made was that in the kitchen of this house there were at least twelve bundles of bananas I’m talking at least a good 40 bananas were in there. I found this to be quite odd. The location of this party was in Golden, Colorado, not a far jaunt from my boyfriends house were our journey began. In walked a girl I recognized, by the look on her face she was as equally unpleased by the awful aroma as I was. I realized this girl was from my math class which came to me as a surprise because this was a School of Mines party. I came to realize that about fifty percent of the girls at this party were not from Mines, most of the ladies came from Metro State or Denver University. There were probably about five guys to every one girl at the party which I have learned is typical of these parties because not many women attend the School of Mines in comparison to men. The baseball parties inhabitants were not very diverse. It was a group of about forty white individuals ranging in ages from 18-23. Almost all of the men there were athletes and all of the females were either athletes from Mines or from a different school. I found this to be typical of the other parties as well. After about thirty minutes the guys luckily had all decided it was time to leave and go to a different party. I grabbed my things and left that smelly place as soon as I could!
Once we left we made our way over to the football house which is called the “Thunder Dome” this is not a joke. The “ Thunder Dome” was pretty crazy on this night because they had played their first game that morning and this was the first party of the new school year there. The whole front yard was crowded with people. We pushed our way through and got into the house the second you walked in you were being shoved into people. Luckily I have a big boyfriend who I can use as a shield to push my way through with. We made our way through the first room and the next room was lit with just a black light and there was very loud music playing and people dancing in a very un-tasteful way. We got out of that room as soon as we could, the last room we had to squeeze through was the kitchen. The kitchen was much more laid back, the people in it were all just hanging out and having fun. This room was well lit, didn’t smell bad and wasn’t full of bananas so it was probably the most normal place I had encountered so far that night. We hung out in there for a bit then the 105 degree temperature of the house became too much to handle so we made our way to the backyard where we remained the rest of the night. It was very nice outside everyone was talking about their summers and reconnecting. There were a lot of familiar faces and the night was finally feeling fun. All of the sudden I hear two football players talking smack to each other than next thing you know a fight breaks out. One of those fights you see in the movies where everyone circles around them and oohs while they pummel each other until two others guys go in and break it up. After the fight the party died down quite a bit and we decided it was time to leave so I gathered my crew and got them all home safe.
My second night of observation was the following saturday the eleventh of September. This weekend some of my girlfriends from High School came to visit so my crew got larger. On this night our first stop was at the “hockey house”. Have you noticed the trend yet? I have at this point come to the conclusion that only athletes at the School of mines throw parties. At least they are the only ones that throw parties people actually want to attend. So we get to the hockey house and there are a large number of girls that don’t attend Mined covered in bright colored paint. Why they were covered in paint is still a mystery to me. We made our way to the “beer pong” table which was elaborately built or more so “engineered” by one of the boys living at this house. Every house we have been to is obviously more for partying than living in. I would never live in any of the houses we went to. Back to the beer pong table we are all standing there everyone is chatting and having a fun time as I make my little notes into my cell phone about the surroundings. We only recognized about 4 people total out of the 100 that were there so we decided this wasn’t where we wanted to be so I gathered up my friends and we left.
My last destination was the “Soccer house”. The soccer house was cool. The soccer players that live there obviously have rich parents. There were quite a few people there but I knew all of them. I looked down and there was a dog at my feet I sat down and played with it a majority of the night. That puppy got a lot of attention that night. The girl to guy ratio at this house was about three guys to every one girl. There was music playing off of someone's mac computer and there was a huge 52’ flat screen on the wall. The house was very old and had a really strange layout. I left my spot on the couch with the dog and made my way into the beer pong room to see what was going on in there. The team that had just won was on a 18 game winning streak which had people very excited. I looked back out into the living room where I had previously been and noticed that everyone had left. They had all went outside and were being very loud. People were running around in the streets dancing and having a jolly ol’ time which was not the greatest idea since it was eleven o’ clock at night and there were under aged people there. We decided it would be in our best interests to go home.

This was were my observations ended. I realized many things from this experience. I noticed the gender gap, I notice most of the girls that go to school of mines parties go to other schools. I also realized about 95 percent of the people at these parties were athletes. Like I thought it would be, each party had a lot of similarities and they each had their differences. At each and every place we went everyone had their own place,there were all sorts of different people and they all had their own niche. My observations also proved that you never know what to expect. I learned that all in all its fun to go out sometimes and celebrate with your friends, but I learned its even more fun to have a calm night at home with your friends just having a good time; thats were I belong, thats my place.