Trip Down Memory Lane Pt. 3 - The Sleep Over!!!

Okay.  Enough poo and fart topics for a little while because quite frankly, it's starting to stink around here.  (Ba Dum Dum).  But really, with a name like Mental Vomiting, did you REALLY expect to read social commentaries on politics and social awareness?  I sure hope not, because I'm not THAT kind of guy.  I prefer to call myself an ostrich when it comes to politics.  I just hide my head in the sand and try to think up ways to make people laugh, because life is serious enough and you don't need me to ruin your day too.  So if you want intelligent topics on stuff like that,  go read the Wall Street Journal.  You won't see it here because I'm a bit of an idiot. 

As you can see by the name of the topic, I'm hopping back into my DeLorean and taking that bad boy up to 88 m.p.h. and going back to my childhood, and maybe some of yours depending on your age.  I've discussed the whole Street Light phenomenon in pt. 1, http://scottsweitzer.blogspot.com/2011/02/trip-down-memory-lane-pt-1.html, and I talked about the concept of playing pretend as kids, http://scottsweitzer.blogspot.com/2011/02/childhood-memories-pt-2-two-magic-words.html, so now I'm going to head on back and talk about a wonderful pastime as a child that has also seemed to go by the wayside for some reason or another.  This was usually a weekend activity that involved several stages of planning and manipulation, on the kids' parts, but if done correctly, you would end up with either you spending the night at your friends house, or your friend staying over at your home.

Now before I get into the whole institution of the sleep over, let me say that this topic came into my targets after watching my step daughter have friends stay over.  I guess it's the teenager in them coming out, but the whole time her friend was over, they were either on the computer watching videos on You Tube, talking on the phone, or texting someone.  It's like they didn't even bother to talk to each other, they just communicated electronically to others.  Such a weird thing.   "Come on over and spend the night.  We will not talk to each other for most of the evening and IT WILL BE A BLAST!!!!!"   *Sigh*. . . . I guess that's the old person coming out of me.  "Back in the day", we didn't have all the electronics to distract us from reality.  Nope, we had to entertain ourselves by either conversation, games, playing pretend, eating, prank phone calls, and late night scary movies.  We didn't have enough time in the night to accomplish everything we wanted to, but we were going to try.

The first major decision that us kids had to figure out was just whose house we were going to stay over at? That major decision had a lot to do with whose house was the funnest and whose house could you get away with the most.  These were important things to take into consideration.  "Can we pull off prank calls at Billy's house?"  "Will Tim's parents let us go outside in the dark?"  "Will Matt's parents let us stay up all night watching scary movies?"  These were ALL questions that needed going over before the house was decided on. It was like being in an important cabinet meeting in the White House because we were deciding on the fun factor of OUR nation.

Once we figured out who the number 1 choice was, it was time for the next step.  Getting at least ONE of the parents to agree to it.  That's all it took, hit Mom in the middle of cooking or hit Dad in the middle of "piddling" and you were raising your success odds by 50%.  The FIRST rule though was that you ALWAYS went to Dad first.  Mom was going to be the one that had to pay some form of attention to you and your guest while Dad just did good to remember my name, so you didn't want her to have first crack at shooting down the idea.  If you could get a yes from your Dad, then you had the whole, "Dad said it was okay if Matt stayed over." opening statement ready for Mom when you had to let her know. So all you would do was wait until your Dad just starts the lawn mower and get his attention.  He will look at you with that confused look that only a father can give you, shut the mower off quickly, then ask you what you want with a tone between anger and confusion.  Then you just cut right to the chase.   "Can Matt stay over tonight?" or even better, "Matt's going to stay the night tonight, okay?"  Being that he probably didn't care one way or the other, he would rather get back to mowing rather than really think the whole thing out, so he would usually say, "Fine."   That's all you needed at that point.  Your evening was good as gold unless Mom really had some real excuse not to let it happen.  In the game of the sleep over, Playing the Parents was your strongest skill needed.

With that yes in the air, you would then move on to step three.  Laying out the plans for the evening and getting your friend to start bringing over their stuff right away so your parents couldn't talk to each other and renige on the deal.   Get that sleeping bag into your living room, his pajamas, his retainer, ANYTHING that belonged to him.  Once it was in the house, it was too late for your parents to back out because he was already there.  Then you would start to plan the evening.  What was going to be the snacks of the evening? How much longer after the street light came on can we convince the folks to let us outside?  Could we try to sneak in a couple of prank phone calls between snack time and scary movie time without getting caught?  How late were we planning on staying up?  If you planned all these important matters out before hand, you would be able to concentrate on the fun instead of looking for things to do.  Fail to plan. . . . Plan to fail. . . .and in the ways of the sleep over, FAILURE WAS NOT AN OPTION!!!!

Finally. . . . Let the sleep over begin!!!!!!  You could usually count on a couple of things on sleep over night.  #1 was that dinner was going to be something that didn't take long to prepare for your Mother, meaning that it was going to be good.  Like hot dogs, grilled cheese, mac & cheese, or some other form of non-nutritional meal.  What a great way to start!!!   #2. The rules would be a little looser around the house so your parents wouldn't come off looking like the ogre's that you have made them out to be.  So instead of having to stay in after the street light came on, they might let you go out back and play around in the dark.  Being a step parent, I now understand the reasoning for this.  They were able to keep the kids out of their house longer and it also let them burn up any energy they had which would save their nerves when we would finally come in.  SNEAKY SNEAKY SNEAKY!!!!!   Playing out in the dark was such a wonderful thing to a couple of kids back then.  You could swat the lightening bugs with tennis rackets,  play hide and seek, and just roam around in the dark waiting for the monsters you knew were out there to grab you.  There was a certain balance between fear, excitement, terror, and fun that was achieved perfectly.

Once inside, things would take a more tactical mission.  We would try our best to find that spot in the house that no other siblings or parents would be.  If you grew up in the north, that would be the basement.  You would go down there so you could try to pull off maybe a couple of prank phone calls before it was time to set up shop as to where you were sleeping.  If you were able to pull it off, and not get caught with the phone, some real fun could be had by all parties involved.  Prank phone calls could range from the simple hang up to a more involved interaction with the victim.  It all depended whatever the mood was in the room.  I was not very original back then, so I would go with the classic fart noise and then hang up.  Yeah, I know.  STUPID.  I just couldn't master the art of the prank phone call back then.  I wasn't the quick witted idiot I am now.  I will say that in high school I had one classic prank call that will ALWAYS go down as my best. 

*Story bunny trail alert*

My parents had gone out of town for the night and instead of leaving me home alone, they figured that I should have a friend come over and spend the night with me.  Lol.  Oh the foolishness of parenthood!!!!
So I had a good friend of mine come over and after watching about every rated R movies we could get our hands on, we decided to pull out the old prank phone call card.  Thanks to there being no Caller ID at the time, this was still a viable form of entertainment.  We took turns making the calls and were having some luck on getting victims hacked off at us.

I then got an idea.  Which for those that know me, know that when I have an idea, something bad is about to happen to someone, and in this case, it was my friend.  I grabbed the handset to the phone and handed it to him.  For you younger readers out there, we didn't have cordless phones back then, so the handset was attached to the base of the phone.  I handed him the phone and dialed the number for him and told him to "talk dirty" to whoever answered. He didn't see me dial but his face turned red as he tried to figure out what to say. The other person answered and my friend said in his most seductive voice, "Um . . . hello".  A female answered on the other end and said, "Hello" Then my friend asked how they were doing trying to figure out where to go with this.   I kept waiting for him to catch on that something was wrong, but he wasn't.

I immediately busted out laughing because I knew what was really happening.  My friend just thought he was the master prank caller because of my reaction.

He was making a few warm up comments for the bomb he was about to drop on her and then this is what happened next.   He decided to cut right to the chase and hit her with his best line.  "What color panties are you wearing?" (Which drove me off the couch and on to the floor from laughing so hard.  Why?  Keep reading).  No sooner does he get that line out of his mouth, his eyes pop open so large that I would swear that Kermit the Frog just took over his body in some weird Muppet paranormal activity.  He turned white as a ghost and couldn't slam the phone down fast enough.

"Why did he slam the phone down and crap himself?", you might ask.  Well unknown to him, the number I dialed for this prank call was his own home number.  I was expecting his sister to answer the phone, but the planets must have been smiling down on me that night, because it was his MOTHER that answered!!!!!  So to sum it up for you, he just asked his own Mother what color panties she was wearing.  How is that for mental trauma?  Well after he said those words to her, she must have done something that he wasn't able to do. . . She RECOGNIZED his voice!!!!   When his eyes popped open it was when she said his name and asked if that was him.  He was now in shock.

I just layed there on the floor while it hit him what he had just done.  He had just asked his mother what color panties she was wearing.  PRICELESS!!!!!

*Story Bunny Trail Over*

After all the fun was done, you still had the best part of the night to come.  You still had a good old fashioned horror movie to watch.  Where I grew up, there was a show out of Cleveland called the Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show, later changed to the Big Chuck and Little John Show, that came on at 11:30 if I remember right.  This show was the greatest thing to ever come along in a childs life.  They would play some cheesy grade B horror movie and also have skits before or after the commercials.  It was the perfect balance of comedy and horror.  I can remember many of times being so terrified by the movie that I would have nightmares all night.  The worst one ever was the movie, Count Yorga, Vampire.   This movie scared the living CRAP out of me.  I couldn't get to sleep without waking up every 10 minutes screaming because this cheesy vampire and his women were coming for me.  I ended up seeing it on TV a couple years back and was all excited to be scared again.  Let me say what a let down that was.  I have NO IDEA what scared me.  It was HORRIBLE!!!  It's like remembering that huge hill you used to bike down as a child but when you see it now, it looks more like a bump.  But at the time, good old Count Yorga left me traumatized to the point that I just wanted my Mommy and wasn't afraid to say it.

The sleep over used to be such a magical time.  It was full of adventure, fun, and horror and I have a lot of great memories from it.  I wish the kids today could understand the simplicity of it all.  Just one or two friends getting together and hanging out.  No texting, no computer, no cell phones, no You Tube.  Just your imagination and a great horror movie was all we needed.   We would wake up tired and exhausted, but it was so worth it in the end, because we had FUN.  True innocent fun.

Except of course my perverted friend that asked his mother what color panties she was wearing!  SICKO!

Smile!!!