My kid celebrated his 17th birthday with a Wagamama’s and a driving lesson. Let’s just say I’m glad social media didn’t exist when I celebrated mine.
For context I grew up in a village. A couple of hairdressers, a chemist and a Scotmid were the retail establishments on offer. Them and a pub or two.
The nearest nightclub was a few miles away – either where we went to school (our shady music teacher was known to be a regular at Secrets) or in a nearby town.
Near if you could drive that is. But too far to pay for a taxi.
The result, therefore, was that any celebration had to take place in somebody’s “empty hoose”, or in the function suite of a pub frequented by your parents.
For a while empties worked for us.
From the age of 15 we’d formed primitive cooperatives to afford a pizza between us, and used the phone box near the park to get it delivered to the swings. A night on somebody’s couch was positively salubrious in comparison.
The problem came when our web of deceit unravelled.
Secrets, subterfuge and the shady dawn of the fake 18th birthday party
With military precision we had all told our parents – pre mobile phones and the watchful eye of Facebook – where would we would be staying.
I was staying at Shirley’s. Shirley was at Helena’s. Helena was at Marian’s and so on.
In reality, about 15 of us, plus our male counterparts, were all in Louise’s house.
Which was fine until Louise’s dad came home early and sent us all packing.
We could either go home and risk the year-long party lie being uncovered or – and this is what we chose – lug a gigantic, communal bottle of White Lightning to a field and sleep there.
That too would have been a foolproof plan. Had one of the lads not forgotten to mention that his dad walked that way to work.
Foiled. But when we all finished being grounded we were back to “who’s got an empty?”.
‘Here’s the polis, hide the booze’
As fate would have it, I moved in with my dad that year.
He lived in the bottom half of a gigantic villa a mile from anywhere. It may as well have been built for parties.
But like all good teen rom-coms this too crashed and burned when my pal Mark accidentally pushed a panic button.
It had been installed because we did in fact live a mile from anywhere and the local CID were at the door before we could shout “hide the booze”.
Short of saying we were filming the Scottish version of Byker Grove, it was hard to explain why there there were so many teenagers roaming about at one in the morning.
Or why the tallest member of the school basketball team thought the best way to hide contraband alcohol was to get into the bath beside it.
But disaster, as it turned out, really was the mother (or rather, naughty older sibling) of invention.
Plan B was born, and I have to say, at 43 years old I’m still proud at the ingenuity shown here.
The year of the fake 18th birthday party
It went like this…
One of us told a parent we were planning a surprise party for someone in our year who was turning 18.
Why were they having an 18th birthday party when we were just 17?
“They got kept back a year at their last school Da.”
(I’m sure I don’t need to tell you no such person existed.)
Blindsided parent in tow, the back room of the Royal Bar was booked for an 18th birthday party.
We even chipped in, in advance, so there was money behind the bar, meaning we wouldn’t even be asked to prove we were old enough to buy some Hooch.
On the allotted date we gathered. We partied. It went without hitch.
We had literally created for ourselves a bootleg nightclub and our parents consented to us being there.
But this is where it gets brilliant.
For the rest of the year. You heard me… months and months of this happened… we repeated this process every time one of us had an actual birthday.
Whoever turned 17 had a fake 18th birthday party.
It was marvellous.
Sometimes a DJ was there, one time a stripper was booked because this was the era of The Full Monty.
But always we had the absolute satisfaction of duping every adult we knew.
Busted, but wasn’t it fun while it lasted?
Sadly, the wheels fell off when we did turn 18 and our grannies and cousins wanted to join the fun.
The illicit function room heist of 1996 ended when the bar man put two and two together and came up with 20 pretty little liars.
“Ye canny be 18 twice hen.”
Indeed sir, indeed.
And so the year of the fake 18th birthday party has been consigned to history.
No Facebook memories springing back up.
No TikTok videos of uncoordinated teenagers limbering up to Whigfield’s Saturday Night.
Nothing but glorious, slightly embellished memories.
I mean don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I’m now basically equipped to stalk my teens wherever they go.
But I will be forever thankful our parents had no such luck.
- In memory of Mr David McAlpine, Calderhead chemistry teacher. One of the greats who we lost this week.
Conversation