The Evolution of Sleepovers

Last weekend was the first time in a long time that there was a big party that everyone was going to, and I didn’t go. In school on Monday everyone wanted to know why I never showed up and I told them the honest truth; I just wasn’t feeling to party. It got me thinking about how social highlights have changed for me as I’ve grown up. I remember when I was young the most eventful part of my weekend was having a sleepover.

I was a late bloomer. In more ways than one, but in this particular instance I was a late sleep over bloomer. I moved into my house when I was about six years old. My sister and I were very pleased to find that there were two boys living right next door that were just about our age. This was just after the ‘girls had cooties’ era and a little while before ‘boys are cuuuute’ faze, so the relationship the four of us blossomed was completely platonic. So platonic, in fact, that they would often invite us to spend the night at their house after a day of wrestling or mud sliding (my sister and I weren’t the most dainty of little girls…) We were even allowed to sleep in the same beds as them. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t do it. It got so bad that I would wake up at the same time every time I tried, and make their parents walk me home. (It was literally just across a tennis court, but it was dark and there were monsters… duh) Soon enough their parents got sick of walking me across a tennis court every night so I was told to just sleep with them. Yes, sleep with my neighbours’ parents. So I would climb into bed with them, and I had to sleep in the middle because I rolled a lot and I would fall off the bed. One night I got into bed with the parents and woke up to ask them to take me home, only to find that the sun was up and they were making breakfast. That was the first night I ever slept away from home.
After this sleepovers became, as I said, the highlight of my weekend. But I was still a little different from everybody else. I was that one little girl that would be saying “But guys, this is a SLEEP over! When are we going to go to SLEEP?!” Coming to think about it I’m surprised I ever got invited back. It was probably because once I did fall asleep I was easy to mess with and I often woke up with stuff drawn on my face…
Nowadays I still have sleepovers with my friends. I find they just make me feel old though. On a normal night one of two things will happen. If it is a Friday night I will get ridiculously tired ridiculously early and start to drift off as my friends and I are talking. It gets so bad that just to appease them I will keep talking in my sleep so that they won’t figure out that I’ve fallen asleep. I never make any sense though, so they always know. If that doesn’t happen I might end up being the last person asleep and I will find myself lying awake in the bed thinking ‘what do I do now’ as my friends are snoring next to me.

Come to think of it, maybe I should just stick to going to parties...

Back when a hamster was my only friend

When I was nine years old I lived in Bosnia with my mother and my sister for a year. Neither my sister or I spoke a word of the mother tongue nor did any of the local children speak English. We lived in a three building apartment complex that was almost completely un-touched by the war (I say almost because in that post-war state machine gun bullet holes in every wall was more or less ‘untouched’.) There were numerous families and a semi-functioning playground. The tower we lived in had a mini mart on the ground flower that sold eggs, ham and Kinder Bueno chocolates. Before my sister and I managed to breech the language barrier our only source of entertainment were the toys in the middle of the chocolates. We collected our own circus of toys. There were elephants and monkeys and aliens. It was magical. Sometimes our washing machine would burst open and flood the apartment and in those special moments my sister and I would seize the opportunity to let our toys swim! At some point she decided that her elephant toy was to have magical powers, but when I wanted my elephant to be magical too she shut me down. It broke my heart. Playing with the toys was never the same once her elephant was magical and mine was not.
After my mother realized that we no longer had the same awe for those little plastic toys as we had for the first couple of months of living there she decided to buy us a pet. One day she brought home a little sandy brown hamster. We named him Bobby McGee after my mother’s favourite Janis Joplin song. We used to feed him whole baby carrots and watch him stick them in his cheeks, it was so cute. My mum used to tell us storied about little Bobbie McGee riding out on a hamster-sized Harley Davidson when we were all asleep. I was in awe of the little creature.
Soon enough my sister made friends with some of the local girls. They brought over a Britney Spears poster and signed all their names on it. After that language didn’t matter, my sister and the fellow Britney Spears fans were fast friends. I didn’t quite fit in. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Britney Spears as much as the next crazed 90’s tween, but I still felt uncomfortable in the absence of English. Therefore I opted to stay home with Bobby McGee. Soon the little hamster was my nearest and dearest friend. He even trumped my sister because I was sure he would let both of our elephant toys have magical powers (I told her this once and she was rather un-impressed.)
Now I am happy to say I do have quite a few human friends, but I still remember the look in that little hamsters eyes when we were leaving Bosnia and had to give him away to a friend (my sister’s friend, not mine) and it breaks my heart all over again.