A House Full of People, or Just You and Your Folks

I was an only child and my parents aren't terribly social, we never had any adults over to dinner or threw a party that I can remember. I would have friends over as often as I liked though, my mom prefered that I invite people over rather than go over to a friend's because she was a bit overprotective and also most of my friends didn't have good home situations.

Just Me And My Folks and My Brother. Despite my brother and I attending fairly central London schools, we lived far out in the suburbs so I rarely had friends over. Also half of the ground floor of my parents' house is "the living room", an immaculately preserved mausoleum that would occasionally be lit up with rare Saturday dinner party guests or host a seder once a year.

My parents (mom and step-dad) never had any friends that were their age. The only company that we ever had were my and my sister's friends. By age twelve, I usually went over to other people's houses.

My grandmother still talks about how her house was Ground Zero for all the teens of Humes High School in Memphis. They had those parties where they'd clear all the furniture out of the way and dance to songs that my great-grandmother banged out on the piano.

My grandmother is in her eighties now, and she remembers all of that vividly.

I never had friends around, because I didn't have any.

My parents seemed to be always having visitors. Usually members of their extended family, who would just show up at the strangest of moments. Fuckers.

Teeny and I had the same childhood.

In contrast, in my grown up life, I have always had the place where everybody comes over to hang out or stay overnight. Go figure.

we had a fairly empty house, but a full driveway. we lived in a supersmall town & had a) one of the few basketball hoops in town & b) a geeky dad that put this mechanism on the backboard that would raise & lower the hoop. So guys would come over & even the short ones could slam dunk & stuff . . . people were always having tournaments in our driveway & slam dunk contests & stuff. Over time, guys from neighboring towns & schools would come over to play. In a lot of ways, it was cool. It probably made me less awkward around guys & toughed me up & stuff but it also sucked b/c when I wanted to go out & practice, I rarely got to practice by myself.

Teeny, Pullapart and I all had the same childhood. Except that I also went to all-girls school and honestly didn't know a single boy until I went to public school in 8th grade. Unfortunately, this is not an exaggeration. I knew a lot of girls though, a whole lot of girls.

our house was always full of people when i was little. my mum and dad liked 'entertaining' (having their mates over for dinner parties which started off very civilised-like and ended up with everyone getting completely boozed to the eyeballs and getting thrown in the swimming pool). also they lived in several different towns when i was growing up so there were often people visiting from other towns and staying with us. as an adult, i live alone and am never home as i am a workaholic so i never really have people at my house. although i have no family in perth so they do tend to stay with me when they are here. also it's only a little house so there isn't a whole lot of room for stacks of people to drop in and hang out with me - they would have to sit on the floor!

We often had home BBQ type parties a fair bit when I was a kid - if something like the footy grand finals or the old Bathurst mountain car race was on, there might be a gathering with some of mum and dad's family friends and their kids over, with lots of adult beer drinking and kid mucking abouting ensuing; those were more often at the said friends homes than ours though, as in those days we had too small a house.

Kids were always over though, all the kids in the street and stuff. We had a huge backyard with swings and a trampoline and slip n slide and stuff, plus a room off thr garage, so there was always kids playing, doign band practice etc. This was all my brothers and their mates though, I mostly just tagged along or, as I got older, kept to myself.

We next to never had dinner parties or proper adult music and booze parties, it was always BBQs and beer and footy.

Once I moved out, I liked having parties - I had a great cocktail party in my first flat where every person was instructed to bring a bottle of a certain booze, great fun. Lots of spontanoeous parties and drinking in my second house in Canberra - there's bugger all else to do up there really.

These days, I like to have dinner parties (roasts!) or the occasional regular boozeup/fingerfood sesh where we'll all sit around with music and/or futurama DVDs or whatever. I only do that a few times a year tho.

oh yeah when i first left school and lived in share houses they were always full of people too, 24 hours a day actually which gets annoying after a while. one cool thing about old rental houses in perth is that they invariably have a massive verandah for people to congregate on to drink beer and pull cones. those times were fun!

i always figured that when my life settles down a bit and i live in a more suitable abode, i will have people over for dinner a lot more often, i really like cooking for people and just hanging out in front of the stereo for long chats about nonsense. only i am starting to doubt that my life will ever settle down though, so i'll probably always socialise at the pub rather than at my house.

We weren't allowed to play in each others' houses, unless it was raining. As for guests, we had people from the church over, and a few relatives. Usually we visited, not the other way around.

we had a swimming pool and a tennis court at our house, which was pretty unusual in the town i lived in. it was a magnet for large groups of kids who never had any desire to play inside.

We had a pool too. Lots of, um, socializing there. Thinking back, I can envision just about anyone I knew having been there at one time or another.

I had the same home situation as teeny, pullapartgirl, and The Milkmaid, though on occasion our home would be absolutely teeming with people. These occasions would usually involve family get-togethers during the holidays. But most of the time, it was really quiet. Well, as quiet as we could be, since (a.) Mom has always loved blasting the TV and (b.) the way all of us (Mom, Dad, and I) at home would communicate would be by shouting at each other. So it wasn't all that quiet, but comparatively so I suppose.

I constantly had people over. People liked me. I didn't understand it then, and often I still don't understand it. Maybe that's part of my charm?...

We always had people over, I always have people over. Seriously, come over. We'll cook, we'll eat, we'll dance, just c'mon. It'll be fun.

For years after my parents divorced, it was just my sister, gran, mum & myself. It was a constant struggle being the only male in the house, any kind of argument ended in the three of them ganging up on me. My mum had friends round quite a lot, which gave me an excuse to disappear for an evening. It ended up that when I got home from school, I’d just go straight upstairs and stay out of their way.

When we lived in England, our house was a constant social whirl of friends and neighbours and churchpeople.

When we moved to America, all that stopped. I did not realise at the time how isolated my parents, and especially my mother, were. By the time we moved upstate, we rarely if ever entertained, as each member of the family had skulked off to their own wing to brood by themselves.

The only thing that kept my mum social at all was the church. My father didn't socialise at all until he discovered the local folkie club.

luna babe, I'd give anything to come over and hang out with you havin a few j's and shootin the breeze =) If Im ever in the States I'm so comin to visit!