Sunday, January 18, 2009

Daisy asked me last week if we could have a party this weekend. I changed the subject.

Daisy asked Hank if we could have a party this weekend. She said yes.

Jesus. Does Hank not get how this works? I'm forced to assume she was raised by wolves, the kind who let their cubs have big sleepover parties. Stupid wolves.

Anyway, the house is currently filled with 9 year-old girls and they're all giggly and loud and undoubtedly planning to smear their pizza-covered grubby mitts all over our walls. Hank's big plan is to entertain the little monsters this evening by feeding them ice cream sundaes for dessert.

Jesus. Wolves.

Somehow, at the end of the evening we're going to cram all these children into a bedroom and hope they stay there for a reasonable number of sleeping hours. Thus, to my list of life-regrets, I must now add the failure to put locks on the outside of the bedroom doors in our house.

So, uh, that'll be my evening. But it does vaguely remind me of the last time I crammed myself into a room with that many of my peers for the night.

It was around 1992 and I had driven up to Reno for a weekend with a bunch of my coworkers. To save money we just booked one room. Two of the guys got beds and the other three of us slept on the room floor in sleeping bags. We spent all day on Saturday gambling and drinking and then stumbled back to our hotel room to crash for the night.

In the middle of the night some people started banging on the outside of the hotel room door. They were screaming, calling us assholes, demanding to be let in, and generally threatening us. I laid there in my sleeping bag, shocked awake, and very thankful for the doorknob lock and the chain on the door.

Then they got the doorknob turned and the door slammed open the few inches that the chain would allow. The screaming outside the door intensified and then someone's hand squirmed its way inside the room, grasping for the chain latch.

There were probably a dozen good things that any of us in the room could have done at this point, like jumping up and slamming the door shut, or calling 911. Instead, each of us in this room full of computer programmers stayed completely immobile, apparently paralyzed with fear. Meanwhile, the hand crept closer and closer.

A few eternity-esque seconds later, the marauders popped the chain off the latch and several big guys stormed into the room. They stood before us for a moment or two, silently, and then one of them said, "Oh, crap, wrong room. Sorry dudes."

And they left. And I checked my sleeping bag for piss.

Anyway, I might try something similar with the 9 year-olds tonight. Gotta do something to amuse myself.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh man.I've gots three girls. BTDT have the tee shirt. Be happy you're not finding thongs, listening to all night texting, giggles about the hot boys and finding teen related paraphernalia the next day. I actually had this same though in my head on Saturday:

"Thus, to my list of life-regrets, I must now add the failure to put locks on the outside of the bedroom doors in our house."

Peace (and vodka) be with you.

Mike said...

Meg, you're right in that I don't yet have to worry about thongs, boys, or paraphernalia, but I also can't really guzzle the vodka when I'm in charge of other people's kids. Sip, sure, but not quite guzzle.

Sue said...

Thanks for the chuckle. I can't believe that happened to you in Reno. BTW - weren't you completely grossed out by sleeping on the FLOOR of a Reno hotel? Yech.

Mike said...

Sue, it didn't occur to me at the time, but now that you mention it, YUCK! It wasn't a particularly nice hotel either.