Make More Noise at Midnight!

We asked Sparkler Tanya_v for her tips on making noise at midnight. Now if you'll excuse us, we're off round up some safety pins! —SparkNotes editors

It’s New Year’s, and your house is filled with relatives, friends, casual acquaintances, and everyone else your parents decided to invite (and even a few that aren’t invited). When midnight rolls around, you want to make as much noise as possible. Well, read on, mes amies, for I am about to give you tips on how to get the most noise from your guests to mark the arrival of the new year:

Bust balloons

Everyone LOVES balloons. Scoff all you like, but when you see a balloon filled with helium, don’t you want to just grab it, unfasten the knot, and inhale? Or maybe dip into your pocket for something sharp and pop each and every one of those colorful, weightless globes of air, all the while snickering like Muttley?

For maximum noisiness, unleash your inner balloon-popper. Buy a bunch of balloons (future-y colors like black, silver, and white are great), spend this evening blowing them up, pass out safety pins to each guest just before midnight, and instruct everyone to bust a balloon at the stroke of twelve. And you know what would be better?!? Fill the balloons with glitter confetti. Fun AND loud. (But your parents might kill you.)

Turn on the television, radio, whatever, and turn up the volume HIGH

Better yet, make sure that the volume is at its minimum at the start of the party, so that when you turn it up, not only will it make people jump (an added bonus for you), but it will also instantaneously add to the noise  people are already making. Pick a channel where a New Year’s party happening, and chances are, when midnight strikes, they’ll have fireworks and loud music.

Set off fireworks, of course!

If your parents are rolling in money, get them to have their own personal fireworks show installed in the garden. If not, you could always buy a whole load of firecrackers (take care to buy the ones that “whistle”—they make a lot of noise, and are perfect for such occasions), and pass them around. Have a candle ready, and as soon as the clock pings 12, ignite them all at the same time. Satisfying and noisy, perfect for New Years Eve. And festive too!

Drop textbooks

This one is a tad unorthodox, but still results in a lot of noise. All you need is your school books, which you have no use for at the end of the semester but still have much residual anger toward. So this is what I suggest: Hand all your guests a textbook (something heavy, like a piece of literature from Homer, or your collection of Shakespearean plays, sonnets, and other material he wrote, or even your mathematics textbook), and line up guests in front of a sturdy table.

At the stroke of midnight, have everyone slam their respective textbooks on the table, like how Ms. Trunchbull brought the glass plate down on the chocolate cake-eating boy’s head in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. You can even stand on the other side of the table and lead the book-dropping like an orchestra!

Resort to Paris

And if all else fails, just switch on a Paris Hilton movie (I recommend The Hottie and the Nottie, or House of Wax….wait, what other movies has she done?) and celebrate the coming of the new year with screams of horror and revulsion from your disgusted guests **snickers**.

What are your fave ways to make noise?

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