Ask Your Mom If You Can Spend the Night.

Boy has been spending the night at various friends' houses recently. Last night was no exception. I have a hard time with that kind of thing, mostly because for so long it was just Boy and me, and I got to know all of his deep dark secrets. Now when we get to the pool he runs off with his friends and I only get to watch him from a distance (if I get to close he might be embarrassed), or he goes to his friend's house for the night, and I just get a general overview ("We played, took his dog for a walk, you know stuff"). I guess I shouldn't complain; I am sure my mom didn't get much more than that.
So here it is, Mom. What I did at sleepovers when I was ten. Now there are only two places that I can really remember sleeping over at when I was little. The first was my cousin K's house which really only involved playing in her attic, watching whatever movie happened to be K's favorite at the time (Grease 2 was a big one), and scaring each other witless about seeing ghosts.
The other place that I spent a lot of time, was my friend Lizzie's house. Liz's house was so different than my own. The third oldest in a family of seven (later eight), Liz's house just always felt PACKED. With only two sisters, one in high school and not home too much, my house felt empty in comparison.
Once the sun set, we would play kick the can with the other neighborhood kids until Liz's mom made us come in at about ten. The thing I loved most about that game was the thrill of hiding in other peoples back yards in the middle of the night, or climbing the fence of the people who's scream at you if they caught you in their yard and sprinting as fast as you could to the next yard. I also loved the exclusivity of that game. The older boys made you tryout to play, making sure you could flip a fence, or kick the old coffee can really far, but once you proved yourself, they never argued again. It was just assumed that you would play every night. Liz and I were the youngest in the game.
Then, once we were called in, we'd stay up and play a game (usually Monopoly or Payday) with her older brother until her mom demanded we go to bed. His room was next to their mom's so we'd tell him to come wake us up after she was asleep and we'd finish the game. I only remember that happening once or twice though because either he would fall asleep or we would. The times it did though we played for only an hour or two before one of us would fall asleep on the board. Then we'd sleep late the next morning. Often when we'd get up, we would dance around to George Michael and try and figure out what the lyrics meant. In the summer we'd eat a quick breakfast before piling in their beater car (the nice one was reserved for their dad) their were so many of us, lots of people sat on laps, and we'd all drive to Aqua (a swimming pool) where we'd spend the day swimming with Liz's older brother and trying to avoid the younger ones. Then we'd finally come home. Liz was perpetually sunburned on her nose, but the boys were white as could be because they always wore t-shirts to the pool (which always seemed crazy to me) given their Irish heritage (and super-pale skin) it's not overly surprising now.
I can't imagine that these are the things Boy does with his friend's. Very few people now have that many kids. I know Boy doesn't know anyone like that. The closest he came was his friend Lance who had several half-sisters who were occasionally there. I also know that since he hates sports he'd have never made the Kick the Can cut, or even really want to play. He also avoids danger and rule breaking so he'd have never made it across the forbidden zones of cranky old men's backyards. Though he did come home with a pet spider today, (which I promptly made him release back into the wild) so he must get up to something.