I'm wondering.
Do teenage girls still have slumber parties?
I'm curious about this because every single April 10 since I was 14 years old, I think about the slumber party at Joanne Buhr's house, which I had to miss.
I couldn't go to the party because, as I told Joanne over the phone, my mother had a baby.
That baby was Laurie; she was born April 7. Even in those days, moms and babies had to stay in the hospital for a while.
Since we had another toddler at the North Boyer house (that would be my sister Barbara who was about 16 months old), I had to stay home and help out in the kitchen and with changing diapers.
So, I missed Joanne's birthday-party slumber party.
I missed another of her slumber parties a couple of years later. It wasn't for her birthday---just a fall overnighter.
Well, shortly before the Joanne's party, I had to call her with the news.
"My mother just had a baby, so I can't come to the party," I reluctantly told her. I really wanted to come to the party, but to use the same excuse twice---that may have led to my reluctance to talk with her.
This time my brother Jim was born.
He probably has no idea that his older sister had to miss another of Joanne Buhr's slumber parties, but I'm sure he'll always know that he was born at Bonner General Hospital during halftime of the Sandpoint-Lewiston football game.
The Bulldogs were undefeated that year, and Dr. Wilbur Hayden did not want to miss the game, so he brought along a portable radio.
In that game, my brother Kevin was playing for the Bulldogs, and they won 9-7, thanks to a safety, and stayed undefeated.
I'm sure Jim is proud that his older brother played a part in Sandpoint High School's stellar undefeated season.
It probably has never bothered him much, however, that his older sister had to miss yet another Joanne Buhr slumber party because her mother had another baby.
Joanne, at the time, reasoned in her response to my news and excuse that maybe she shouldn't schedule anymore slumber parties.
Hard to forget such unusual timing, especially during our Wonder Years.
Today, once again, it is Joanne's 77th birthday, and, so far, I haven't received any invitations from her to come and have a "sleep? over" at her house in Southern California and talk all night.
But I did suggest in her birthday greeting that it might be a good idea.
Maybe that's what we could do when we schedule our next class reunion in 2025. Imagine a bunch of 78-year-old wrinkled, arthritic women coming to the house and rolling out the sleeping bags while the men sit around at someone else's house and watch football.
I always wondered why there were sleeping bags at slumber parties because we never slept in them very much.
For example, I remember one slumber party at Sherry Davis's house where we rode our bikes around town long after dark, including to the old IGA laundromat next to the Hair Hut.
Upon our arrival there, we opened all the dryers to see if any contents were remaining, and, by golly, someone had left a pair of panties.
I can't remember if we took the panties with us, but I do remember that on our bike route we went to Lakeview Cemetery to visit the grave of our classmate Karen Fredstrom who, along with her cousin, had died after our sophomore year in a car wreck in front of the old A + W Root Beer stand.
I'm sure none of us have ever forgotten Karen or the tragedy that shook the entire community. She was a classmate of mine from first grade on, and, later, her mother Frances was one of our Lincoln School teachers.
The cemetery visit proves that we did not always resort to total mischief at our slumber parties.
I do remember one that was held in our front yard, and, by golly, some of the group did doze off to sleep in their pajamas and their sleeping bags.
So, those in the impish insomniac crowd gathered up bras and hung them from the guy wire next to our ditch.
The next morning when Werner Paulet drove by in his ice cream truck, he did a double take when he spotted those bras dangling and blowing in the wind.
Slumber parties in my day, for the most part, except for maybe at Joanne's house (how would I know since I never got to go?) were not exactly tame.
Probably the closest we came to being snatched up and hauled off to jail was at Sherry Davis's house north of ServaBurger.
There was an overpass above the highway just north of her house. What a wonderful place it was to drop water balloons on the traffic below!
It was wonderful anyway until one car slid to a stop, pulled off the road and the driver jumped out and started pursuing us.
We ran fast back to Sherry's house and the driver didn't catch us.
One of our crowd wasn't very happy with the rest of us because she got caught in the barbwire fence and fell behind. But she escaped too, and let us know when she returned to Sherry's house about her disdain for her "so-called friends."
Anyway, one more year Joanne has celebrated her time on this earth and I have felt a tinge of sadness for missing her slumber parties.
Still, I wouldn't trade the babies who grew up to be pretty neat adults for the impish fun I may have missed way back when.
Happy Birthday, Joanne.
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