Friday, February 27, 2009

Par-tay!

In fifth grade, the highlights of my social life were birthday parties and sleepovers, the ultimate event, of course, being a birthday party sleepover. These were chances for us to:
  • Watch movies with dirty words in them—and maybe even boobs! Or butts! Ewwww!
  • See how much crap we could eat without becoming mortally ill.
  • Engage in spaztastic behavior that made little to no sense. (Likely a side effect of our gargantuan consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.)
  • Attempt to stay up until the wee hours. (The high-fructose corn syrup again acting as our accomplice.)
And if you don't believe me, the following school journal entries will attest.

10-3-88
Sleepover

On Saturday, Katie and Jessica slept over at my house. We pigged out!

In fact, by sixth grade we would dub our sleepovers "Pig-Outs." The Sleepover Friends had nothing on us, let me tell you what. (Well, okay, they may have had a special dip, but whatever. Canned tuna and cream cheese? Bleck! I'll stick with the Little Caesar's pizza pizza, thank you very much.)

We ate Cool Ranch Doritos, M&M's, Skittles, E.L. fudge cookies, ice cream, and rootbeer floats (Not to mention the pizza we had for dinner)!

Just looking at this has given me bad breath.

And do you guys remember E.L. Fudge cookies? They were creepily Keebler elf–shaped.

What kind of elves bake cookies in a tree? Seriously.

We stayed up until 4 (except me, who fell asleep at 3:45 and woke up again at 4:03) playing Truth Or Dare, Who Am I?, watching "Hairspray", putting on make-up, dancing, listening to the radio, talking, and eating, of course.

Of course! Those rootbeer floats aren't going to drink themselves, you know!

We talked on the phone, too!


This probably means one of us called a boy we liked and asked him who he liked, all the while pretending the other two girls weren't standing by with their ears pressed to the receiver.

IT WAS FUN!


-SADA

P.S. We also acted stupid.

10/10/88
Jessica's party!

At Jessica's party we (me, Jess, Sarah H., Sarah M., Sara S., Casey, Georgia, Rachel, Sherron):


1) We waited for everyone to come


2) We played a game where Jess's mom brought in a tray (16 objects were on it) and we stared it it for 60 sec. then she took it away. We wrote down everything we remembered.


3) We ate dinner (PIZZA). My tooth became really loose.


As I'm sure you can tell, this party narrowly avoided becoming a "tradgedy."

4) We had dessert (rainbow angel food cake and chocolate marshmallow ice cream)


5) Jess opened her presents.

6) We watched HAIRSPRAY on her VCR.

If you check the dates on these entries, you'll note that we just watched Hairspray a week ago. We could not get enough of segregated dance shows in 1960s Baltimore!

7) We limboed. I cracked my hip.


"Tradgedy" almost struck once more! I would actually complain about the hip-cracking limbo incident for years to come and claim that I could never... limbo... again.

8) We took a queer picture.


9) MY MOM CAME TO PICK ME UP!


—Sada


2/27/89

Katie's PARTY
Happy Birthday, Katie

Katie's party was on Friday–Saturday. It was the best party! The people there were me, Katie (DUH!), Jessica, and Maggie. (Casey couldn't come, you know.) So first we ate. Pizza, then ice cream cake for dessert. Well, we were gonna have a séance with the OUIJA boards. (Me and Katie's) But she opened her presents. I bought her a little stuffed animal Orangutang and some dangly earrings.

So we didn't have the séance because Maggie didn't believe in the OUIJA boards.

I love how this implies that the rest of us DID believe in the OUIJA boards.

We had a ceremony. My name was BASTET. I was Nefertiti's (Jessica's) daughter. Katie was Isaida. Maggie was Tasmarina. We made up signs + countries.

I had read The Egypt Game about 8,572 times too many. Zilpha Keatley Snyder, I don't care that you're 81, you're still my girlfriend!

Then we started watching "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". It was boring so we watched "Psycho I." It was scary. Katie was cackling during the shower scene.


The reason I'm referring to Psycho as Psycho I is that the first film we watched in this "series" was Psycho III (Alfred Hitchcock is rolling over in his grave RIGHT NOW), viewed at a sleepover several months earlier.

Then we watched "Psycho II." They get scarier and grosser by the movie!

Grosser, certainly. (I'm pretty sure someone gets decapitated while ON THE TOILET in Psycho III.) But scarier? Pshaw.

We were so scared, we watched "Mary Poppins". That was funny because Maggie kept yelling, "Shut up! It's Mr. Banks! He's on T.V.!" then she pulled us around in our sleeping bags.

Maggie's love for Mr. Banks was a running joke for years. Apparently it never made any sense.

We went to sleep about 4:30 AM.

How sad is it that I could stay up later ate age 11 than I can at age 31? Pretty, pretty sad.

In the morning Maggie had to leave at 10:00 for orchestra. So me and Katie and Jessica played Hide-N-Seek. Katie's step-dad, Steve, seeked us. It was fun. Then my mom came! UGH!


-SADA

I now present to you...

Sada's List of the Top 3 Most Scandalicious Sleepover Movies*:

1. Real Genius. I'll admit, it was largely scandalous because we watched it when were tender young second graders, and it contained references to things like "penis stretchers" (oh my GAWD!) and "making it." Quite frankly, I think I still have a crush on Chris Knight and his amazing T-shirt collection, which—holy awesomeness!—can be purchased here! I'm about two seconds away from ordering a pair of bunny slippers.

You're so hot, I'll overlook the fact that you're actually Val Kilmer.

Sidenote: Have you guys ever noticed how much Mitch freakishly resembles Sarah Jessica Parker?

Right? They were obviously separated at birth.

2. The Exorcist. This one we watched in fourth grade and OH MY SWEET LORD. A girl roundabouts our age gets possessed by demonic forces, spins her head around like she's some sort of super creepy OWL or something, projectile vomits pretty much constantly, uses the C-WORD, and stabs herself in the girl parts with a crucifix??? I'm still not over it.

Could someone give Linda some Pepto to settle her stomach, please?

3. Psycho. For at least a month afterward, I made my mom sit in the bathroom with me while I showered so that no one could slip in and stab me to death. Enough said.

Ha ha! You can't kill me if my mom's here!

* I am not including any of the soft-core porn we watched on Skinemax during middle school. That's an entry for another time. Or, quite possibly, never.

NEXT TIME: We return to Friendship, and I take the term "character sketch" a bit too literally.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am 21, and I can't stay up past 2. Well, I've done it a couple times, but those were extenuating circumstances involving my friends and I being lost in another state for several hours, encountering a transvestite prostitute at Hooters, seeing a famous porn star at a movie theater, and an incident involving vehicular manslaughter...well, almost. So yeah, that doesn't count.

Also, I love how every one of these entries includes a list of all the junk food that you all ate. I surprised these parties never involved vomiting. Finally, I saw Psycho at an inappropriately young age as well, and I was afraid to take a shower for a while (though I never asked anyone to be in the bathroom with me).

Sadako said...

Is it wrong that I'm suddenly ravenous for Keebler elf cookies? Mmmm, elf shaped!

MissRoyalTurkey said...

I still adore the E.L. Fudge Cookies! Love your website. I wish I could find my RL Stein inspired stories that I wrote in the sixth grade. I would totally submit them.

Anyway, ahh sleepovers. The pizza, the junk food, the late nights - such memories. We would always try to stay up all night, and then spend the next day sleeping.

Sada said...

I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. last night! This post must have inspired me. I've still got it!

zanne said...

I used to love sleepovers, too! They were the best. The only movies I remember watching at sleepovers were Girls Just Want to Have Fun and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.

I remember you mentioned Cool Ranch Doritos on my blog awhile back. Whenever I eat them, it reminds me of you & your sleepovers! (and I get really worried about my bad breath for the rest of the day!) I loved EL Fudge cookies. I think they still sell them, right? I am going to look next time I go to the grocery store!

I can still stay up pretty late, but I end up sleeping the whole next day!

Thanks for the links to my blog. :) I really need to update it!

Katherine said...

"A girl roundabouts our age gets possessed by demonic forces..."

Well then, it's a good thing you left the Ouija board alone, now wasn't it? ; )

(I did once play with a Ouija board at a fifth grade sleepover. "Ellen" and I kept our hands on that thing for half an hour, and it never moved. Well, once it sort of drifted toward the "Yes", but that turned out to be the wrong answer to the question. This being two years before I was told by a church leader never to touch one...)

I think we saw a lot of the Olsen Twins/Young Lindsay Lohan at our sleepovers.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the Ouija board. I played it in fifth grade and we were such believers we SWORE to each other not to move it ourselves.

It didn't move. What a surprise.

Unknown said...

i remember when i was 12 pouring through "dirty books" with friends for sentences like; "With Ian, it was sweet." What did THAT mean? Our misinformed imaginations soared. One of our favorite books was some james bond thing by ian fleming, i think. (No VCR s when i was 12, we did have Ouiqa boards though.)

Amanda said...

OH MY GAWD. I loved LOVED The Egypt Game. By far one of my favorite books of all time ever!

mandy said...

Oh my gosh.
I think I just entered a time machine. I feel so warped back to my childhood.

Hi. My name is Mandy. And I'm 30 too.

Junk food.
Junk food.
Junk food.
AND
Dirty Dancing? yes...