What it meant to grow up in East Hanover

Here’s the funny thing about going away to university, you really do learn how to appreciate your hometown a little bit better. At the very least, I did. When I was going through my “depressed-teen-nobody-understands-me” phase, I loathed my town, but as I grew older and came back home from Rutgers less and less frequently, I can now appreciate why my parents chose to move to East Hanover.

Growing up in East Hanover meant upholding the preadolescent sports fueled rivalry between us and our neighboring town of Florham Park, but then learning to love them later when our towns combined into one school – our beloved Hanover Park High school. Although everyone secretly knew that the rivalry was still alive and well, we all at least tried to keep it a friendly rivalry.

After recognizing our town’s inner competitive nature, growing up in East Hanover also meant growing up in a town where everything closed at 9 pm, and thus forced us to find some weekend entertainment at our treasured AMC Loews movie theater, The Livingston Mall, or at the high school football games.

Weirdly enough, growing up here meant growing up in a town that had far more graveyards than it did sidewalks. Which when you think about it, is not only quite dangerous, but actually gives you a higher chance of getting hit by a car and potentially ending up in one of these many graveyards. Correlation or causation? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions with that one.

Best of all, growing up in East Hanover meant midnight trips to Wawa, after school drives to Starbucks, and weekend adventures to TGI Fridays – which was the place to be as a high schooler on Saturday nights. Middle schoolers always thought they were so cool hanging out at Applebee’s, but TGI Fridays was undoubtedly where the real party scene hung out. Being a teenager in East Hanover was truly amazing, it meant skipping school to go to the diner – which was surprisingly easy to do since our school has an outdoor campus and the diner is right across the street – or sneaking onto a bus to the Livingston Mall which picked us up right in front of school. Looking back, it’s almost like they wanted us kids to skip school, they made it way too easy! Needless to say, I skipped school pretty often.

Additionally, growing up here meant going through a specific right of passage when you reached the age of seventeen – driving your friends an hour and a half down to Seaside Heights and finally proving to your parents that you are an adult and are old enough to drive independently on the dangerous Garden State Parkway.

Lastly, growing up in East Hanover meant knowing exactly where you were going to go to college – County College of Morris, Montclair State University, or Sacred Heart University. But, me being me, I chose to make my own path and go off to none other than Rutgers University. I’ll forever love my decision to come here, and I will always love this town, even if there are more graveyards than sidewalks here.