When I was a kid, I quite honestly LIVED for sleepovers, sleeping bags and a tiny tv in the damp, half-finished basement of someone else house and we were seriously happy. Every weekend was an exercise in convincing my mom that I could sleep over at a friends house and not get sick or be cranky the next day. One of the worst parts about middle school and high school was that asking for a sleepover was far more mine-fieldy than it had been in elementary school. Something about puberty made asking someone of the same gender to spend the night was far more loaded of a question. First was the fear of rejection - what if they don't want to come? Or even worse, what if they DO come and then tell everyone else at school how disappointing or uncool the whole thing was? Then people started having sex. Granted this was way before I was even thinking about it (later life conversations have indicated that I was a bit of a late bloomer if not outright back-asswards in high school, I however prefer to think of it as a lack of boyfriend options especially after eliminating boys whom my friends had already dated) and the chances of being accused of being a lesbian if you asked the wrong person too eagerly, were pretty good. It occurs to me that being called a lesbian shouldn't have carried the unspeakable horror that it did. I'll admit that I didn't want to be called this, in part because I'm not in fact a lesbian but far more than that was the disdain and disgust with which the accusation was thrown.
A while back I came across this website called WriteYourPrincipal.com. This movement encourages people to write to the current principals of their former high schools and ask one question: what is your school doing to stop bullying and support GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer) students and their allies? It's all very warm and fuzzy to think that our society is open minded and tolerant but the rash of teen suicides because of bullying indicates that our children aren't, which to me is a pretty good indication that we as a society aren't either. Up to this point I've only thought about sending a letter of my own, mostly because I just didn't know what to say. I've never ACTUALLY been discriminated against because of my sexual orientation and while I'm sure some of my friends must have experienced this, I don't remember actually seeing it first hand in high school. I think I know what to say now, and to hold myself accountable I will post whatever I end up sending here in the near future.
I digress however and my original question still stands: when did sleepovers lose their lure? Is is since we moved out on our own and now home isn't necessarily a place that we can't get into nix level shenanigans? I'm not sure but I do know that the fun of staying up late in someone elses house, sleeping on the floor and on couches and waking up far away from my own shower has lost its glitter and lure. A while back a friend of mine had a truly heart wrenching turn of life and needed some overnight company. While I am glad that I was there, she truly needed other hearts beating around her that night, I didn't sleep and I ended up sick for over a week. It was misery and I have to wonder, is this the first sign that my soul aging? Or is it just that I've become that darn attached to my own bed?
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