‘Remember those slumber parties? Gossip, gorging and games were a rite of passage’

Remember going to slumber parties? They were all the rage when we were young. From about the age of 11 to 16, everyone participated. One week it was at Barbara’s. The next week was our turn. Almost everyone had a chance to host.

I’m not sure why they called them slumber parties because we didn’t get much slumber. Usually we were all huddled together until the wee hours of the morning gossiping about the boys we liked, complaining about our parents, or playing with the Ouija board.

That game was very popular among all of us. Several of us would gather around the board and its magical oracle, asking a variety of questions.

“Does Brad like me?”

“Will I get invited to the dance?”

“Why does Fred have cooties?”

All types of questions were asked. Nothing was off-limits. Sometimes the Ouija board would spell things out, and other times we’d just ask simple yes or no questions. Every now and then we would pose a numerical question and upon occasion, someone would be accused of cheating by pushing the oracle to a designated answer. But for the most part, we all played fairly.

At our parties, ghost stories were often told. Some of us who were better storytellers could really spin a yarn, ensuring that no one at the slumber party got a decent nights sleep. Our house was very old and run down so it already looked haunted. It was a perfect backdrop for any scary story.

Sometimes we would compare bra sizes and once we even found a falsie on the floor, but nobody would admit owning it. Everyone wanted to have bigger boobs. Once we used falsies to catch partially inflated water balloons. I remember pretending I was on a softball team as I caught the water balloon in a pink falsie as it came flying through the air. That was loads of fun.

Often we would put the hand of one of the slumber party guests into a warm pan of water, hoping that they would pee in their sleeping bag and be the recipient of ridicule. It wasn’t a very nice trick to play on any of our friends, but we did it anyway.

One morning, my boyfriend Scott came over with several of his semi-hoodlum friends. My mum wasn’t enthusiastic about these kind of guys because they were wild and often spent time in detention after school. I was crazy about Scott. He was cute, dangerous and fun.

Once, he crashed the party with some of his pals while we were all still in our pyjamas. My friends were slightly embarrassed, but I think we secretly enjoyed them peeking through the window before my mother saw them and chased them away.

The slumber parties were a real right of passage for all of us, before our little breasts really started to bloom, and body hair began to sprout. Within a few years, we all graduated from going to parties like these, along with playing other teenage games like ‘Spin the Bottle’ and ‘7 Minutes in Heaven’.