Friday nights just ain’t what they used to be. When I was a kid, Friday night meant I could stay up late. Play outside after dark. Catch lightning bugs in the summer and wow...I can’t remember winter Friday nights. None at all. They must have been boring.
In high school, Friday nights meant a football or basketball game to go cheer at and yell myself hoarse. Bus trips when we played teams an hour or more away were the best. Nothing’s more electric than a bus full of hyperactive teenage pep club girls singing Little Bunny Foo Foo for forty miles, and Roll Over (there was 10 in the bed and the little one said, roll over, roll over) for another 50. Those bus drivers must have had nerves a steel (or a bottle of Jack under the seat.) When there were no games (or in summer) Friday nights were spent on the phone or at slumber parties. There was always something going on on Friday nights.
College.....anyone who has ever been to college doesn’t need a rundown here. I recall many nights in a pizza bar in Kirksville, Missouri, drinking beer, eating pizza and singing dirty lyrics to clean songs. We were young and away from home, after all. It was an obligation.
After college, Friday nights were spent on dates, or with a group of people in clubs and bars. After closing them, we’d all head for breakfast and roll home around 5 or 6am. As we started pairing off into young marrieds, or steady couples, Friday nights were spent at each others’ homes, firing up the grill in summer, and watching movies or listening to music in winter. We muddled along that way for years, gradually shifting over to Friday nights at the in-laws when friends started breaking up, moving 1,000 miles away, or spending their Friday nights at their children’s’ sports/school activities.
At the tender age of 40, I became a new mother and Friday nights changed forever. I no longer looked forward to any social activity because I was just plain dog-tired and wanted to stay home and get whatever little nap that I could. Soon the kid was in school and we were caught up in that swirl of Friday night sports/school activities, and stayed busy that way until this year when the kid went off to college. We were free! Friday nights meant we could go anywhere, do anything, and had no responsibility to be at a cross country meet at 8 the next morning, or getting ready to host the team for their Friday night, load-up-on-carbs dinner. There was no need to stick around the house in case 400 teenagers showed up on the spur of the moment. Friday nights, for the first time in forever, belonged to us.
So, how have we spent those well earned hours of freedom? The man has sat in the garage, the only place other than the great outdoors he’s allowed to smoke. He calls it his apartment. He has a chair, a refrigerator, a table for his beer can, and a boombox. I’ve spent Friday nights since the kid left, reading, watching old movies, and turning in early. We’d take a trip or go out to dinner, but we send all our spare change to the college bursar, who monthly, thanks us kindly and asks for another contribution towards the remaining balance.
I send him the last contribution February 28, 2013. The very next Friday, I’m going to do something wild and crazy. I have three and a half years to think of what.
No comments:
Post a Comment