The morning after my daughter’s slumber party, which involved 10 girls ranging in age from nine to 13, my living room looked like the battlefield of Gettysburg, without the gore.
There were unmoving bodies strewn across the floor in the weirdest display, as if they’d been tossed out of a moving vehicle. There was popcorn everywhere, plastic glasses knocked over, spilling sticky juice on the hardwood floor. Blankets of every colour were lumped over sleeping figures and almost none of the pillows had a head resting on them. The scene was like something from a frat house movie – and boy did it take me back to memories of good times.
Of course, that was before the invention of the iPhone, iPad, iPod – all an iExcuse not to actually look up and engage in conversation. We didn’t text each other from one room to the other and we sure didn’t text boys we knew. No, we called boys and hung up on them. We were cool like that.
Oh how I miss the smell of mildew in my friends’ basements, where a sleeping bag and hard floor were good enough. At my house, everyone had an inflatable bed. Comfort? What? Mind you, our technology didn’t have cameras attached to every device, so nobody could blackmail you with embarrassing photos and put them on the Internet before you caught them doing it either. While that didn’t happen at the slumber party I hosted, it was an eye-opening experience to how fast things can get out of hand. Thank goodness I was never caught in an awkward position back in my day. By the time my pal pulled out her camera, loaded her film and put the flashcube on, I’d have been conscious.
We didn’t have to worry about violent video games, because tennis on Atari wasn’t exactly graphic (or fast), and we were innocent enough to think joystick was a naughty word. Scary movies were only an option if the parents could afford the deposit on the Beta machine in a big black box we rented. Footloose was considered risqué.
While I appreciate the Carpenter every day, let me just say watching him try to herd a group of giggling, screaming and occasionally volatile girls through 24 hours of non-stop activity and painful decibels of noise only made me appreciate him more. When he had to wait a full hour to go into the bathroom on Sunday morning because packs of girls were spraying perfumed concoctions and smearing on lip-gloss just to go to the variety store, he looked, well, afraid. I enjoyed that. Maybe he’ll think about that bathroom reno now.
It was refreshing to see a pack of girls who were the antithesis of mean girl culture. These were smart, funny, creative girls who have the power to change the world – and will.
Hosting a slumber party gave me flashbacks to a time in my life that seemed simpler, even if it was not, and I miss the old faces and places that helped shape me. It made me appreciate my own parents, and those of my friends who opened their homes (cupboards and fridges) to us every weekend. They gave my friends and I the best memories.
I sure do miss my childhood friends who are still only a phone call away. Maybe it’s time to make that call. One word: reunion?