Sleepovers and Shenanigans

Girls are famous for sleepovers. No nudity or pillow fights involved. Just staying up late, giggling, and  gossiping. For my seventh birthday I had a slumber party. My first sleepover. We stayed awake until one in the morning (the latest I had ever been up) then my parents came down and scolded us.

I remember sleeping over my best friend Christine's house when we were eleven and watching High School Musical with all of her neighbors late at night and thinking Troy Bolton was so dreamy, while also hoping I wouldn't have to sing that much in high school.

In the sixth grade my friend and I did not fall asleep until seven in the morning. We made a game of sneaking out the back door and seeing who could race down the street and back first. My parents weren't too happy to hear about that one.

For my friend's birthday in August right before the start of sophomore year we planned a scary seance. We walked our friends through the farm field to the old haunted Hooten house. What was once the largest and wealthiest home in our community, is now long abandoned, and over grown. We sat around the blanket holding hands and waiting for signs. By the time a boy we know happened to zip past us on the street by bike we had successfully freaked out our circle.

We were sixteen and our Ouji nights had evolved into scary movies. We would huddle together on the couch gripping each other and screaming when Freddy leaped out of the water at Camp Crystal Lake on that dreaded Friday.

After middle school dances, high school football games, and day long track meets, sleepovers were to follow. There was just something unique about staying up all night with the girls you spent all day with. The jokes are funnier at night and the secrets are shared during the sleepovers. Talking until you fell asleep was normal, but you never wanted to be the first asleep.

Sleepovers were the highlight of the weekend, but by senior year our sleepovers had taken a turn. They quickly became alibis so that we could  get into late nights shenanigans with our high school boyfriends. "Sleeping over Hunters" usually meant making out in the back of a car until two am.

Those days were long gone and like many other aspects of life that slowly fade away, you never realize they end until they are over. But then college comes along with new late night adventures that are just as memorable and just as bonding in their own way. Tonight in Paris my new friend Becca and I combined these two ideas: college and sleepovers.

Alone in Paris away from everything we know the two of us have paired up. We are living side by side in a hostel while we search for a flat to live in, we have been scrounging on food to save money for the traveling we want to do, and we have been figuring out this big, beautiful, scary city, together (and BONUS her French is impeccable so she does all the translating).

Becca began by telling me about her two sisters while we ate our dinner on the floor. I in return drew her a chart to explain my siblings. Soon the stories began flowing and before we realized it nearly six hours had passed. We were giggling and talking about everything from our friends at school to the boys we had made out with on golf courses, cruise ship elevators, and all the details in between. At some point her parents rang and when they asked what she was up to she smiled and said, "Oh, Abby and I are having a sleepover."