If you grew up in Mountain Lakes NJ, you definitely had your fair share of school embarrassments, town-wide gossip and your favorite food joints. Here are 20 signs you grew up in Mountain Lakes New Jersey!
The horrible bleach jobs, the horrendously bright colored lacrosse shorts, the pack attitude… If you saw a lax flock in the hallway, you turned the other way.
Pretty much every person at MLHS who can walk plays a sport, if not more. Option two was the saving grace of everyone who didn’t feel like suffering through the high school’s idea of a gym class.
Taking that leap from ‘Childwood’ to Briarcliff was great, except for the gym changeup. Gone are the days of guarding bowling pins and playing kickball inside; now, you learn (to hate) burpees, how jump rope can be turned into a form of torture, and how much you can hate a man you only see for 43 minutes a day.
By far the most bizarre teacher in the entire school district; skinny to the point of looking anorexic, covered in tattoos, and cousin to Jared Leto (allegedly). He’s one of Mountai. Lakes’ few memes. Aliens on the Wall, anyone?
You know, before global warming set in and the lakes actually froze #fakenews.
Literally the best couple weeks of your elementary school life. Pausing lessons to learn a dance? Hell yes! Every girl being jealous she didn’t get Japan and every boy wishing he got China so he got to hit the gym stage with sticks.
The complete opposite of the elementary school one; embarrassing, outdated dances taught by an embarrassing, outdated man, that you had to perform in front of the class. Square dancing was relatively painless, but forget about the African dance. Being taught a cultural dance by a straight, white guy kind of took the fun out of it.
Wearing last year’s costume? Tsk-tsk. Not matching with 20 of your closest friends? Minus points there too. You need to be in a hot new costume complete with makeup, or you might as well just go home. Elementary school was tough.
Unless of course none of your chicks hatched, in which case you got a hard lesson on mortality at the tender age of six.
The entire third grade heard about it: Mr. Lewis, dreaded sub to this day, let a baby guinea pig with its head stuck between two cage bars die. It was hot gossip before we knew what gossip meant.
And honestly, you were kind of okay with it. Hapgoods was way better decorated and let’s face it, we were all going to go there whether it sucked or not.
No school, which is awesome, but also no power… If you didn’t have a generator life was pretty bleak.
Lakers shop there because a) it’s close by and b) it’s bougie and lakers love nothing more.
Newsflash, it’s Denville Dairy, no competition. Not only is it way more convenient to drive to (if you say you like driving in Boonton you’re lying to yourself), but the ice cream is better (sorry not sorry), and you don’t have to awkwardly be served it by your classmates.
Better pretzels will never be found. Too bad it closed because literally no one bought anything but the pretzels.
I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said, “oh, you moved into the Dignes house right?” Straight up weird; regardless, I know who moved into the Davies’ house and the family that moved into my old house have a kid on the crew team. #littletownfulloflittlepeople
When you were seven, Island Beach was the prime social spot in the summer, and you swam until your hair reeked of lake. As you got older, Birchwood was a nice place to go swimming or take a date on.
The closest Walgreens is in Denville, the gas station is in Parsippany, the grocery store is on the border of Boonton… You even have to go all the way to Short Hills for the mall (because please, you’re not going to Rockaway).
Teeny tiny town equals teeny tiny school district. You knew the name of every kid in your grade, and every new kid was celebrated and fought over. You rejoiced when you finally got to high school and you found Boonton Township people. Variety! Different people in your classes!
I did not realize until high school that this was not something every town did. Decking your house out for Christmas and then having people pay to nose around in it? Only in Mountain Lakes. (It makes a really good date though; play house with your boo!)
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