The Double Sleepover

Newsletter 2023-12-17

We did the impossible: We survived a multi-kid sleepover. It doesn’t sound like much since multiple kids sleep here every night. Then again, based on the amount of thumping I hear in the darkest hours, you could argue that no kids ever actually sleep here. Children, like guinea pigs, have random bursts of activity around the clock. The multi-kid sleepover this weekend was dreamt up without my knowledge. If I was part of the planning stages, I would have come up with some excuse for why we had to call the whole thing off. It’s been a while since I’ve had a surprise surgery. You never know when a kidney might explode. I wasn’t informed about the sleepover until my thirteen-year-old, Betsy, and wife, Lola, had already worked out all the details. All I had to do was pick up kids. That’s all I’m ever really needed for. The only difference between me and an Uber driver is Uber drivers get paid. Uber drivers also get reviewed, but I get that, too. Betsy gave my last parking attempt zero out of five stars. It’s not my fault. Those parallel spaces are impossible.

Lola was wise when setting this thing up. She scheduled it for a weekend when we’d be getting rid of one kid. I barely saw my eleven-year-old, Mae, for two straight days. She had a BSA Scout lock-in Friday night followed by a dance and sleepover at a friend’s house Saturday. If it were me, I would have paced myself for one or both events. Scratch that. I wouldn’t have scheduled two things for one weekend, or even one week. Leaving the house once every fortnight is about right. Mae, on the other hand, went full bore for the whole weekend. She stayed up all night at the lock-in. Her scoutmaster confirmed it. She and the other girls were up from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., playing games, doing sports, and watching movies in the church gymnasium. The movie part is what impresses me the most. If I turn on a film when I’m even a little bit sleepy, I’ll instantly be unconscious. Mae and her friends stayed up for the entire run time of the most recent Spider-Man. I don’t know how long it actually was, but based on other movies that have come out lately, I assume it was about four hours. Mae was likely able to stay up through the whole thing because she’s perpetually in motion. Kids are like atoms. Even when they appear to be completely still, they’re actually vibrating in place.

When I retrieved Mae Saturday morning, I insisted that she needed to go to bed right away. With luck, she could get six hours of sleep in before she had to wake up and get ready to go to her friend’s house at 2 p.m.. Mae crashed for a few hours but was back up by late morning. It’s hard to get much sleep in this house during daylight hours—or any hours, really. Someone here is always living their life at maximum volume. This isn’t a library. Mae had our traditional, nutritious Saturday lunch of pizza rolls with no sides before Lola whisked her off to her next engagement. If I didn’t have Mae’s location activated on her phone, I’d never have any idea where she is. Thanks, Google Maps, for parenting my kids.

Lola took Mae to a friend’s house twenty minutes away in the next suburb over. If it were up to me, I’d ban my children from fraternizing with anyone who lives outside a one mile radius of our house, but I can’t control how the county draws up the school districts. This particular classmate recently moved to the area, and Mae is her first new friend. The friend wanted Mae to show her the ropes for her first dance ever. So did her parents. Growing up, they attended a conservative Christian school that didn’t have dances. I assume that anti-dancing administration was the inspiration for that famous Kevin Bacon movie, Attack of the Clones. When Lola dropped off Mae, the other kid’s mom peppered Lola with questions about what was going to happen at the dance that night. It was stuff Lola and I had never really considered. We just dump our kids at the gym doors and assume they’ll be there at pick-up time two hours later. We’re not too concerned about them getting lost or disappearing. Kids are like feral cats. Once you feed them, they never really go away.

If this weekend taught me anything, it’s that I owe all of my children an apology. It drives me crazy that they constantly fight with each other when getting dressed. Putting on your own clothes is a solo activity. So is brushing your teeth and hair. I can’t think of any part of the process that requires human interaction, besides maybe waiting in line at the sink, of which we have many. If you really can’t wait thirty seconds to rinse and spit, you could walk to another bathroom instead of launching a holy war against your sister. It turns out I was wrong about everything. Getting ready is anything but solitary. Mae and her friend were going to get dressed up for the dance together, and so were Betsy and her group. It’s why Betsy needed two friends here instead of one. You can’t have a single partner for doing your hair and makeup. You need an entire pit crew. Mae went over to her friend’s house at 2 p.m. to make sure she had plenty of time to get ready for the dance at 6. Betsy’s friends were scheduled to get here at 1 p.m.. The older you are, the more work there is to do. At that age, it took me exactly thirty seconds to prepare for any dance. That might be why I didn’t have a girlfriend until college.

Betsy and her friends didn’t just plan to copy YouTube makeup tutorials to transform into completely different people. They were also going to bake Christmas cookies. It was scheduled to be a full afternoon. To get ready to destroy the kitchen, Betsy first had to clean it, which was pretty cool. Now I know she can be incredibly motivated if tidying up is attached to having her friends come over. I’m drawing up plans to leverage sleepovers to get her to clean the entire house. I took Betsy shopping Friday night for all the ingredients she would need. She had so many different kinds of cookies on her agenda. Saturday afternoon, she and her friends started with sugar cookies, which were simple enough. I strategically purchased four spooky sugar cookie kits at seventy-five percent off the week after Halloween. When I got home from buying them, I was devastated to discover that they weren’t the pre-made kind that you just roll out onto a pan and tossed in the oven. For these, you had to add butter and water. That was way too much work for me. Betsy, however, eagerly made use of them. Halloween cookies can be Christmas cookies if you deploy the orange and black frosting creatively. With the help of some winter themed Christmas cutters, she ended up with goth gingerbread men. Jack Skellington would have been proud.

The girls got through three boxes of sugar cookie mix before it was time to get ready for the dance. Then they disappeared, commandeering multiple bathrooms and evicting me from the top two floors of the house. I was okay with that. I’d had my headphones on for most of the afternoon to drown out the giggling as I worked on the final edits for a book. No pressure, but if I don’t get them done by the end of December, my editor has promised to burn down my house. With an hour to go until the dance, it suddenly occurred to me that I had to feed these children. Lola was still gone. She had turned her drive to the nearby suburb into a full Christmas shopping trip, so I was on my own. Lola suggested that I pick up Chinese food for everyone, but the middle schoolers in the house weren’t having it. Getting multiple children to agree to anything is impossible. How dare I suggest a food option with actual flavor. Normally, I would have just steamrolled all objections, but in this case, some of the kids weren’t mine, so I had to be nice. Instead of anything even vaguely ethnic, I pivoted to the one food all children adore: McDonald’s. Rather than writing down a detailed order and double checking that I asked for all the right condiments, I decided to simply get a giant pile of McNuggets and fries. I thought the guy at the drive-thru would be thrown off when I asked for one hundred of his finest breaded bird chunks, but that didn’t give him pause at all. Weirdly, the part he had a problem with was when I asked for fries. It took him a solid two minutes to figure out how to add deep fried potatoes to my order. How dare I ask for such a rare and unusual side? I made things harder by changing my order halfway through. Chicken nuggets were cheaper in bigger increments, so I upped my request to include three forty-packs rather than two forties and a twenty. I came home with a hundred and twenty McNuggets and six large fries. I have literally no idea how much food teenage girls eat. I figured I would just dump everything on the table and let nature take its course. When Betsy saw the two large bags of Ronald’s finest, she was actually proud of me for the first time in her life. I know what the ladies like, and it comes with extra packets of barbecue dipping sauce.

After the nugget feast, I took Betsy and her two friends to the dance. We agreed to meet in the driveway of a nearby acquaintance afterwards, which would save me from being stuck in the car pick-up line for an hour. To make sure no kids skulk in the halls and make trouble, the school ejects all the children from the building at exactly 8 p.m., regardless of the weather. I insisted that all the girls take coats to prepare. They all promptly ignored me. When 8 p.m. rolled around, I showed up at the designated pick-up spot. The kids were standing there in the pouring rain. I thought this would be a valuable life lesson about being ready for outdoor conditions. They insisted it felt good to cool off. Besides, they were only out there for about a minute before I showed up. I ruined the moral of the story by being on time. Curse my promptness.

When we got home, I thought it was time to wind down for the night. The girls thought it was time for more baking. They were fired up after a night of intrigue and drama at the dance. They made brownies and cinnamon rolls in between rounds of playing Fortnite and watching movies. Meanwhile, I retreated upstairs with Lola to watch one of the new Star Wars shows and go to bed at a decent hour. Getting old is exactly as awesome as I’d hoped.

Betsy and her friends stayed up ridiculously late but woke up refreshed like they had a full night’s sleep. Mae was the same way when she got dropped off. The biggest lie parents ever tell themselves is, “They’ll sleep well after this.” The only ones who ever sleep well are us. Even watching these kids is exhausting.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James