Some time ago I decided to write a quasi-auto-biography. I still tinker on it occassionally but with the advent of blogging I no longer feel the need - I like the immediate gratification of posting the ironies of my life as an overeducated receptionist on the bottom of the totem pole hierarchy and - well - it looks prettier, too.
So, here, for your reading enjoyment is an excerpt derived straight from the pages of my life - you're welcome to it!
Slumber Parties and Peacocks
Annie knew better than to fall asleep first at a slumber party at my house. She, like the rest of the other girls, all 12 and 13 year olds, had been warned that the first one to succumb to sleep, will be “pranked.” Last week, we had dug Penny’s bra out of her night sack, put it in a bowl of water and put it in the freezer. When she found it the next morning it was suspended in a huge chunk of ice. We had made the first ever “brasicle.” The week prior to the nippley-bra incident, April had fallen asleep first and was treated to a makeover that only Ronald McDonald could have truly appreciated. She awoke to a rouged nose and smeared Revlon-red lips. Her pillow looked as if Tammy Faye Baker had slept on it. She glared at us, tossed her long dark curly hair over her pudgy shoulders and left, never to return to another sleepover.
Our victim at tonight’s festivities was the kind of girl who ate paste in elementary school, religiously dressed her Barbies daily and loved the movie “Grease” so much that she had her very own Pink Ladies satin bomber jacket. She was socially inept, even for a twelve year old, so, naturally, she was our first choice as a target anyway. She fell asleep during the séance, which always took place at midnight. Lying on her stomach, arms straight down to her side, she drooled as we partied around her. One-by-one the rest of the girls retired, each casting Stephanie and me a look of apprehension as they snuggled deep into their sleeping bags, trying to disappear.
We waited.
Everyone was asleep now, it was close to three o’clock in the morning and I was just about to doze off, too, when I heard Stephanie: “Katie… Katie!” she whispered. I popped my head out and stared at her, “yeah?”
“Whattaya wanna do?” her hazel eyes were glistening with anticipation.
“I dunno, whadda you wanna do?” I was tired and not thinking with the usual evil genius streak that I often possessed.
We decided to give her a makeover, too, for lack of better inspiration. We sat on either side of her, my caboodles opened up like a surgical toolbox. Stephanie painted blue circles on her cheeks with lovely yellow spots in the middle. I sculpted her nose into an orange beak using my bonnie bell tangerine lip-gloss. We spiked her hair with travel-sized aqua net and painted rings around her eyes with silver glitter. Annie never once stirred during the whole process.
“We can’t just do make-up, we have to do somethin’ else, somethin’ bigger! If we don’t they’ll just keep fallin’ asleep too soon, and we can’t have that.”
She was right. We needed to do something drastic. We needed an act of pure commitment and genius. We needed her underwear. Figuring that she was a pretty heavy sleeper, Stephanie grabbed on to the right side of her Tuesday underpants while I wriggled the left side. We had revealed most of her butt when she coughed, rubbed her nose, scared the crap out of us and went right back to sleep with a little snort of contentment. Quickly abandoning the underwear heist, we crawled quietly into the other room to regroup.
“We could tape her to her sleeping bag?” I suggested.
“No,” Stephanie said, “that’s been done.”
“Tie all of her clothes together with zip-ties?”
“No.”
“Whipped Cream in her shoes?”
“No.”
“Make flyers of her that say ‘I am Pee Wee Herman’s love slave!’ and post them all over the school/town/church.”
“No - huh? Wha-?”
“Nothing. Why don’t you come up with somethin’? I’m fresh out!”
With that, Stephanie walked across the room, plucked a large decorative feather out of an arrangement on the dining room table and twirled it in the air above her head. “I have an idea.”
The next morning we awoke rather groggily to the sounds of shrieks of laughter of ten pre-teens gathered in a circle. In the middle lay a sleeping Annie in all her made-up glory, with a foot-long feather sticking out of her nether-regions. It was a sign to all others: Beware yee who seek sleep, or someone will stick a feather in your ass and call it macaroni.
.jpg)
