Part of my mission in this column is to help you, the loyal reader, better navigate the tricky twists and turns that is this life we live. So this week I will provide tips on how to survive a teenage slumber party. My daughter, who turned 13 last month, just had one and I learned some very important lessons:
• Invest in a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones. It is the only hope you have of getting sleep.
• Don’t worry about setting a “lights out” rule. In fact, don’t worry about setting any rules. None of them will be followed, and inevitably the whole group will stay up until 3 a.m., eat pizza on the sofa and quite possibly order $1,000 worth of (insert something ridiculous and unnecessary here) on the Internet.
• Do not, at any time, for any reason, go downstairs to check on them after they go to sleep. Because someone will be a little terrified, mistake you for a burglar and think this is a terrific time to test out their Judo skills.
• Expect that your poor dog, who stayed up with the group the entire night, will be lethargic and low energy for days afterward as she tries to come to terms with both the lack of sleep and the things she heard about middle school boys.
• Be aware that your electric bill could be $200 to $300 higher thanks to all of the cell phone and other portable device charging. In fact, you may want to warn the electric company that a transformer could blow, plunging the neighborhood into darkness.
• When it gets extremely noisy and you start getting a little over-tired, ask yourself this question: “Well, would I rather they be off somewhere else doing who knows what and not in the safety of my home?” Think about this very carefully, and ask yourself, “Well, how much trouble could they really get into out on their own? I mean, are we talking about stealing a police car or money laundering? Because if not, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”
• Remember that as a little boy you also went to sleepovers, and the major difference is that while they’re all packed on the sofa singing along to “Mama Mia” at the top of their lungs, you and your cronies were out thinking about stealing a police car or whether laundering money was as lucrative as it sounded. And could you do it with a bag full of quarters.
• Do not try to understand “Mama Mia.” Do not try to figure out the plot. Do not contemplate why anyone thought turning a bunch of ABBA songs into a movie would be a good idea. Do not spend any brain cells trying to figure out why a bunch of middle schoolers would sing all of these songs that are like 50 years before their time. You haven’t figured out the space-time continuum, and you sure ain’t gonna’ figure this out.
• Know that these are experiences they will always remember about childhood, and that makes it worth it. Even if the dog is lethargic for two days, and you can’t get the ringing in your ears to go away.