This past weekend I hosted 7 of my daughter’s college friends—5 girls and 2 boys-- in celebration of her twenty-second birthday. They are all very nice kids from nice families and they could not have been more respectful or delightful.
And I can’t tell you how much pleasure I got from seeing seven 22 year olds frolicking for hours on Saturday afternoon in my 12’ round 24” deep blow up pool and playing slip and slide in my backyard. Seven well-educated, chronologically mature adults were behaving and enjoying themselves like a bunch of 7 year olds (but for the Bud lights and the explicit music). It was a mini-frat party. But what puzzled me, at their age, with all their education, was not their youthful behavior, but their sleeping arrangements.
This past weekend, during a heat wave, my second central air conditioning zone went on the fritz again. So we popped 3 window units we had purchased a few weeks ago when the central A/C previously went out into the windows on the second floor. And then we bought one more unit for one of the bedrooms on the third floor—formerly my daughter Samantha’s room—the bedroom with the double bed. The secondbedroom on the third floor—the one with the twin bed was a hot house—we chose not to buy a new a/c for that room. But not to worry because I set up a full size aero bed in my husband’s office in the basement where it is cool and quiet and dark. And I also borrowed 2 more twin aero beds from my friend Elaine to have on hand if a few stragglers came home with the pack after Saturday night’s sojourn to Manhattan.
There was plenty of bedding—and there was plenty of bedding such that everyone could be cool and comfortable. And there was enough variation in the bedding to allow for privacy between males and females.
So at 5am Sunday morning when they all rolled in, I heard thumping up steps, and water running, and a few whispers. But by 5:30 am the house was once again quiet. When I got up around 8-ish, my dog Cosmo pushed his nose on Kara’s bedroom door and I noticed that there was only one female sleeping in the double bed. Hmm I thought. I guess instead of gaining some stragglers maybe we lost a few?
When everyone came downstairs for breakfast I inquired where everyone had slept. The distribution was as follows: Kathleen and Brett (male) slept on the third floor in Samantha’s bedroom, Emily slept in the twin bed in the air condition-less sauna-like bedroom also on the third floor. Kat slept by herself in the full sized bed in Kara’s room on the second floor, and Briana, Kelly and Evan (2 girls and a guy) all slept together in Briana’s double bed. No one slept in the basement on either the full or 2 twin aero beds.
So my first thought was this—well I know why Kat will be attending a top 30 law school—she was the smartest of the bunch since she slept in the biggest bedroom on a full size bed all alone. Except that Kat was angry that she didn’t have a sleep partner. She felt slighted that she was all alone. She was unhappy. She was jealous of the others. So I then asked Emily why she slept in the sauna-like third floor bedroom when there were lots of other cooler places to sleep---and she said well I wanted to be close to Kathleen and Brett. So I asked Kathleen and Brett why they had slept together and not with a friend of the same sex? And they said because we like sleeping together—we are used to it from school (it was 100% platonic). So then I asked the final 3 bananas why did the 3 of you sleep in the same bed when Kat was sleeping by herself in the room next door? And they said we didn’t really think about it—we always sleep this way. And my final question was—why didn’t anyone sleep in the basement on the aerobeds? And the resounding answer to that was because the basement was scary. Twenty-two year olds apparently are still afraid of ghosts.
Huh? Did I just take crazy pills? What kind of decision making was that? And I cannot blame it on the alcohol—by the time they got home they were all sober (more or less). Why would they all sleep uncomfortably when they had the option to sleep comfortably? Was the math that hard? These kids were all the cream of the crop from a tier one university—how could they not have figured out a better plan?
So I gave them breakfast, packed them sandwiches for their trips home, kissed them good bye and stripped the sheets. And on the way out they thanked me and told me that they were so grateful for the hospitality—and I told them if they wanted to thank me then they should subscribe to my blog so I could see my “pageviews” rise---and they laughed and then asked excitedly will you write about us? (they enjoy good “press”---this is the Facebook generation—everything they do must be fully documented, photographed and put out into the universe)---and I said maybe….if you promise to come back and stay again….
A deal is a deal. So I suppose, who’s getting company again? And I am only too happy to have them.
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