Growing Up

I don’t know what year it was, but my best friend was still Tonya Johnson. Nana and Pop had come down from Indiana in their camper and had parked it in our enormous backyard. It was hooked up to the power, but we had to go inside if we had to pee. God knows, no one wanted to deal with a sewage system over the holidays.

It was New Year’s Eve, and we had managed to cajole and coerce Nana to let us spend the night in the camper. Pop was always on board, given he was just a big kid himself. It was so neat, just the two of us in our own world. It was kind of like we were adults and had our own apartment. We weren’t scared to be outside-ish by ourselves. We were just excited, barely containing ourselves.

Sleepovers, in the past, meant being quiet in the middle of the night so as not to wake our parents and get called on the carpet for waking them up. “Go to bed!” In the camper, who could hear us? We could party all night and no one would be the wiser! “Party on, Wayne!” “Party on, Garth!” Whoo hoo!

We started the evening by listening to the Casey Kasem Top 100 for whatever year it was. We danced and snacked and danced some more. Somewhere in the late hours, it had to have been after midnight. We were singing at the top of our lungs, having a grand ole’ time, when suddenly, there was a loud banging outside. We were terrified. We quickly turned off the music. More banging. I went to the camper door and looked through the window. It was Nana! And, boy, was she mad!

I opened the door. It was Nana. And she was pissed.

“What on earth are you two doing out here. I can hear you all the way upstairs and inside! It’s after midnight. You should be asleep. You should be ashamed!! Go to bed. Now!”

When she was done reading us the riot act, she stormed off back into the house. I was a bit shocked as, with my grandparents, I could never do any wrong. Here, however, I was in the doghouse, a bit literally, if you ask me.

“Maybe we should go to bed,” Tonya said.

“Maybe we can just turn off the lights and turn down the music?” I said, hoping Tonya was still up for some partying. I wasn’t quite ready for bed.

Tonya smiled at me. “Okay, that’ll work.”

We turned the music down, the lights off, and stayed up a little bit longer. Finally, we curled up in the top bunk over the front window and crashed.

The next morning when we got up, we got dressed and cleaned up our mess. We traipsed up to the house fully expecting to get yelled at, and my dad was waiting at the back door for us. We could hear Nana ranting about our overnight antics to anyone who would listen. As we passed by Dad, I heard him chuckling. I don’t know what he was thinking, and it’s been so long now that I bet he doesn’t even remember the incident. It just warmed my heart that he thought it was funny, and it gave both Tonya and me great piece of mind as we smiled at each other. We weren’t going to get in trouble for being the happy-go-lucky-music-loving children we were.

We went inside and apologized to Nana, which seemed to appease her. We both got hugs and breakfast. I think everyone thought it was funny, except my brother. I think he was a little jealous.

Why do we have to grow up?