Slumber Party!

      Mom once mentioned that Eric had told her 1967 was the most significant year of his childhood because we had taken two vacations that year – the trip to Washington, D.C., and also later that summer we trekked back to Honey Harbor in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron.

Honey Harbor 1967

        I guess, for me, starting with the summer of '66 through autumn '67 – it was a time jam-packed with stuff – the Girl Scout trip to Dearborn, Michigan, the Christmas when Mom gave Dad a pool table and he gave her a stereo; at Christmas also, I had my one and only slumber party with a few friends from my class, the next spring was church Confirmation, then trips to Washington and Honey Harbor, the whole year of sesquicentennial celebrations in our home town of Boston, New York, and then in the fall of '67, Dad began coaching little league football in town – the junior varsity, meaning the 6, 7, and 8 year old boys, while my brothers were on the varsity, the 9, 10, and 11 year olds – and Mom and I finally caught on to the rules of football from watching their games through September and October.

Two Boston Patriots!

        I can't remember if economically my parents were doing better – I doubt there was too much more money for spending since they were in the midst of all the house renovations. Perhaps it was just the age we kids were at that we were able to do more? I don't know.

        So what about the slumber party? Mom had a picture in her photo album of a group of girls in their pajamas. They are not sexy eighth-grade-girl-pajamas – just warm pjs – it was December, you know, in fact it was Christmas week.             And the girls in the picture are not facing the camera – the pic is of the back of pajama-clad girls. I think we were performing a levitation – something we did at all the slumber parties back then, and we had asked Mom to get a snapshot when we were levitating – I don't even know which one of us was getting levitated – and of course the picture does not show the levitated body – just the backs of several pajama-clad giggling girls.

        Levitation involved someone lying on her back while all the other girls crouched around her in a circle – we would do some incantations and then place our fingers under the person lying down; slowly we would stand up and the girl would rise with just our fingers lifting and holding her. It was kind of neat that it worked. My folks were not impressed.

        I can't remember what we ate or drank that night; we did camp out in sleeping bags in the living room and tried to stay up all night talking and laughing, and beside the levitations, I think we might have gotten out the Ouija board. Mom came halfway down the stairs around 3AM and asked nicely that we go to sleep. No one else's parents did that at other girls' slumber parties. Oh well.

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