Sleepover by H

What is sleepover? Sleepover means sleep a night in someone’s house. Simple enough, isn’t it? To the kids in Georgia, sleepover means a lot more than just sleep a night in someone’s house. To most of them, it means a party. To some of them, it means playing all night long! To me, of course, is like a cup of hot and sour soup. I don’t know if the kids’ sleepover is a kind of southern customs or not, but at least every family follows. And so do I. We used to host several sleepovers a year in our house: spring breaks, summer time and New Year’s Eve. December 31st is Raymond’s birthday. Oh boy, sleepover plus Ray’s birthday party in New Year’s Eve is exciting. No one is going to miss it. Every kid loves sleepovers. We started to invite Raymond’s little friends to our house for sleepover since Raymond was in kindergarten. When Raymond was 5, we had the first sleepover in our house. The naughty boys were little and lovely. They played the McDonnell toys and watched the Barney shows. They were jumping up and down like monkeys and chasing each other like squirrels in daytime but they scared to dead at night. They slept like snakes. They wished the night would never come. I do miss the kids’ sleepovers during Raymond’s elementary school years. Sometimes we had Pizza parties and sometimes I took them to Andretti to play all kind of games. The one they enjoyed the most was the racing cars. Superman and Spiderman were their heroes. They didn’t like Barney anymore. They hated the Barney shows because they thought it was for girls. They went crazy and non-stopped playing game-boys but they never went to sleep passing midnight. Years rolled by. The boys grew up and Raymond was in middle school (6th grade). The sleepover began like stay-up-over in 2002. The boys were not small anymore. They stayed up all night long playing video games. Six of them were playing with two big TV screens. Other four of them were waiting for the next term. The four boys got bored in waiting…. Huh, they found something to do for fun. They purposely played with a smoking gun (a gift to Raymond) to trigger the fired alarm in the basement. It was in midnight. The fire alarm went on so I thought the house was on fired. I escaped from the house to the backyard as quick as I could by combining three steps into one. The boys were laughing loud. I knew what was going on. The sky was high and the night in December was murky. I had my nightgown on but without shoes. Oh yes, I was upset. My deep growl rolled from my head. The boys’ hair stood on end with horror and trembled with fear. They then slunk away, back to the house. The night was quite calm. The house a silence ensured. The boys grew up much faster than you thought they would. Some of them were already taller then me. It was the 2003 New Year’s eve. They came again, of course, as planned. Ten, nine, eight, seven… and one…. Happy New Year (2004)! They cheered. They ran. They jumped. Then they then went crazy. They were so excited to watch the New Year’s countdown. The peach ball dropped, a boy threw two punches to wall. Yes, he punched two big holds on the wall. My eyes were stared out and my blood was boiled with indignation. At the time when Raymond helped me to patch the two holes on the wall, I almost wanted to patch another big hole – his mouth likewise so he would never ask for sleepover anymore. Raymond was mumbling - I thought he was talking to me in French! Raymond was in High School (9th grade). They were young teen now. Two weeks ago, Raymond kept begging me for his last sleepover party and promised me they would be just a gathering. He got it (I didn’t know why I was okay with that. I must be bewildered). The sleepover was in the basement as usual. The New Year (2005) arrived. It was 10 a.m. already in the morning. The house was still as quite as a ghost town so I tiptoed down to the basement. Christ was sleeping with his belly sank on the carpet. Thomas had his nose digging into the pillow and two legs stretched out. Philip was sleeping next to the sofa with the blanket covered his head. Jim and Alan slept like a rock and snored like a pig. Iran was sleeping with the game controller on his hands like a statuette. Raymond’s smelly foot was almost kicking on John’s face… The two big rooms in the basement were like a refugee camp. The young teens must be up all night long playing until they ran out of gas then crashed to sleep. The good news was that nothing was broken and it ended peacefully. When the last boy left my house, I took a deep breath and blew it out as hard as I could (too bad, I have asthma). I hope this was the last sleepover party for Raymond. Reply | Reply All | Forward