A couple of weeks ago, my friend celebrated her 22nd birthday. Being the Type A person that she is, she spent days meticulously planning a bar crawl for the big night, but a few friends and I were determined to do something special to surprise her. During the week leading up to her birthday, we collected decorations and cupcakes to prepare for a mini celebration pre-bar crawl.
After very unsuspiciously — or so we thought — inquiring about her plans for the day, we determined that her and her boyfriend’s 6:30 p.m. dinner reservation would give us an hour and a half to decorate our apartment and surprise her before heading out on the town. After insisting that I was too tired to join her for a drink before dinner, I ushered the birthday girl out the door and got busy decorating. As I hung the metallic rose gold “feeling 22” banner on the wall, I thought back to this day last year, when I was hanging a “RIP fake ID” banner for her 21st birthday.
21 is arguably one of the important birthdays, right up there with 18 and 50. By 21, you’ve already reached many milestones on the road to adulthood: You can drive, vote, be called for jury duty, buy a lottery ticket and enlist in the military. The one thing you can’t yet legally do is drink. The thrill of handing a bartender your real ID and maybe even getting a free drink when they realize it’s your birthday makes bars the typical destination for 21st birthdays.
However, the lack of a bar culture in Hanover makes this tradition a little tricky for Dartmouth students. Like anything else, though, they find a way to make 21st birthday culture their own.
Every underage Dartmouth student knows not to try their fake ID at Stinson’s, the little Village Store on Allen Street. What some people might not know, though, is that if you stop by Stinson’s on your 21st birthday, your real ID will get you something even better than a free drink: a free pong paddle.
According to store owner Jack Stinson this tradition began “a long time ago,” when he was trying to come up with some sort of “birthday present” to give to Dartmouth students who came into the store on their 21st birthday. His mother refused to teach him how to decorate cakes — his original idea — because he was “not meticulous enough,” so he had to decide on something else.
“What’s one thing that [Dartmouth students] like?” Stinson recalled thinking.
Naturally, the answer to that question was pong paddles.
According to Stinson, students sometimes make Stinson’s a stop on their 21st birthday bar crawls and take pictures with their free paddles. Other times, students who are stuck studying for finals on their big day stop in during a study break to claim this Dartmouth rite of passage.
In addition to collecting this prized Stinson’s token, students have found countless other ways to make their 21st birthdays special. Mia Ting ’27 and her friend, whose birthdays fall on October 4 and 5, have a tradition of celebrating the night of the 4th into the early morning of the 5th. Their 21st was no exception, but they decided to take it off campus.
“We knew we didn’t want to be at Dartmouth,” Ting explained. “We’re here every weekend, and I think trying to make your birthday special when it’s the same events every weekend is a little difficult.”
Instead of staying in Hanover, Ting and her friend rented a cabin on Airbnb, inviting their close friends. They made dinner, had a bottle of wine and talked late into the night.
“I’m not a huge birthday person. I’ll celebrate with my friends, but I won’t do something insane,” Ting explained. “But I think it was the fact that it was both our 21sts, and so we wanted to do something for the fact that we were turning legal.”
While Hanover might not have the most elaborate bar scene, that doesn’t stop some students. Meghan Goyal ’26, who turned 21 last October, didn’t waste any time hitting Murphy’s for a round of shots.
“[My friend] was already 21... and it was funny because they actually stop serving shots at midnight, so she had to order for both of us,” Goyal said. “And then, the second it turned midnight, she started singing to me, and we both took the shots. As far as Hanover goes, I feel like it was one of the best ways to bring in such a monumental birthday.”
Since then, Goyal has told all her friends to go to Murphy’s at midnight to celebrate their 21st birthdays.
My friends and I are now all 21, and I’ve been to more 22nd than 21st birthdays recently. Life on the other side of 21 has unlocked a new realm of Dartmouth social life — instead of pregaming in whoever’s dorm is the biggest, my friends and I might sit at the bar at Murphy’s for a few drinks before going out.
As my friends and I crossed Main Street en route to the first stop on the birthday bar crawl a couple of weekends ago, we collectively realized how weird and scary it felt to be celebrating our friend’s 22nd. Time has a way of flying right as you’re wanting it to slow down, and every milestone this year has had us all wishing we could slam on the brakes. If only we could be 21 forever.
