Unfortunately, my parents are, by several years, the elders among my family's close circle of friends. This made me the oldest child in the group. Now 22, I was once again faced with the annual New Year's Eve gathering. It has always provided a challenge for me to find my place without any true peers around. And to further blow the matter out of proportion, the only guys a few years younger than me were at home sick–likely with the same winter cold I'd fought off for two weeks leading up to Christmas.

I was finally at an age where conversations with the parents in the group could be natural and rewarding, but even when they were, they eventually fell flat. I certainly wouldn't accuse them or blame them, but my unspoken status among the "younger portion" of the group caused them to subconsciously forget to treat me like an adult.

When this inevitably happened, I was usually forced to retreat into other parts of the building to see what the "kids" were up to. This is the situation I found myself in once again.

After a quick return to the food line to snag a couple slices of tangerine, I began to make my way from one end of the long, oddly shaped common room to the other. The building the group had rented for the evening was clearly an office building at one time, but I couldn't decipher if it was used for anything other than party rental these days.

I popped a tangerine slice into my mouth and glanced at my phone. "Only 7:30? Crap." It was four-and-a-half more hours until midnight; possibly six or more until everyone went home.

The first kids I found were four girls, maybe half my age, playing a game of _Sorry! _at a small table. One girl overturned one of the game's namesake cards and unapologetically yelled "Sorry!" as she removed one of her friend's pieces from the board. The other girls squealed in surprise.

A comment about it not being nice came to mind, but I decided against it, afraid of eliciting a response and being sucked into any interaction with them.

Further on, I found a group of boys gathered around the pool table. Some were younger and some older than the girls playing Sorry! Unable to keep the cue steady, one boy, Jack, if I remembered correctly, missed the white ball completely and jammed the end of the cue into the table. The other boys howled with laughter and he struggled with what to do.

I restrained myself for several moments, but was ultimately unable to resist an opportunity to both help out and show off a little. Stepping up to the table, I motioned to the boy who had just missed. "Let me show you something." He hesitated briefly before reluctantly handing the stick to me. I repositioned myself next to the white ball and carefully examined the table. Spotting the opening I was looking for, I readied to take the shot. "See how I rest my hand on the table with my palm down? And see how I use my fingers to create a steady..." For a moment I struggled to find the word. "...cradle, for the cue?" The boy nodded vigorously.

I carefully lined up the shot, and confidently knocked the 7-ball into a far corner pocket. There was no applause, but I looked up from the table to find a number of mouths hanging open in awe. The boys' reactions and admiration were enough to make my night.

Snatching up the remaining two tangerine slices from where I'd set them on the edge of the table, I popped them into my mouth and departed through the doorway at the end of the common room.

The next occupied room I found is a conference room. Stepping inside, I was surprised to find my brother playing an unknown card game with five girls. I immediately discerned it to be the eldest group of non-adults. All were relatively the same age and actually just a few years younger than me, I realized I had missed a thing or two while away at college. The girls near to my brother in age were no longer little girls, seemingly born to be annoying.