Ah the slumber party... It reminds me of a simpler time in my life. I remember always looking forward to spending the night at friend's houses (or vice versa) because it usually meant junk food, video games and/or movies for as late as we wanted.





Dial-a-Pizza was a locally owned favorite of my friends and I. We would usually get pizza and go to the local corner store to stock up on soda and candy. Most of the time sleepovers were on a friday or saturday so it meant you could sleep in the next day without worrying about school. It was a special time for kids to be themselves without being closely monitored by adults. Below I will break down some of my favorite things about "spending the night" at a friends house.


Usually videogames were a huge part of the slumber party. It was the most focused time you could spend playing videogames. With parents fast asleep my friends and I would sometimes stay up all night playing NES games such as Mario 3, Contra, Guerilla War, and Adventure Island just to name a few. It was great not to be interrupted by your parents or younger siblings who were usually, and rightfully sanctioned off limits from these awesome nights of childhood rebellion. We could curse and really get our aggressions out at the games in privacy.


This was also a time to catch some great comedy on SNL or Letterman. I always loved the music segments and I remember when the Ramones performed "Pet Sematary" on Letterman to this day. My friends thought they were awesome back then, and I love the Ramones to this day.



Ah yes, the pinnacle of the sleepover experience. Rated R and Sci-fi b-movies! There was no chance a lot of my friends and I could have seen these movies in the light of day. Usually rented without a parents consent, or passed down from an older sibling this was the highlight of many a slumber party for me.


Luckily I had cool parents that let me see a lot of these movies, but it still felt pretty rebellious to sneak in viewing of "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Terminator 2". It was also great fun to catch some of the lesser known b-movies on cable such as "Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn" and "Megaforce".


It wasn't always fun and games though. How many of you remember an angry parent waking up and telling you and your friends to "go to sleep!!!" or "quiet down"? This was a true test of a parent's patience as usually they took their sleep very seriously. I always liked staying at friends houses so it wouldn't have to be my parents that were woken up. It would usually take 2 or 3 warnings before we either hit the sack, or the parents just gave in to our late night hooping and hollering. Since we were fueled by too much pizza and soda, we couldn't help but get everything out of the night we could.

Now that we're all grown up we can stay up as late as we want, watch whatever movies we want, and play videogames all night. Although it's great to be able to do this now I still have a special memory of staying up too late with friends. I felt like we really had freedom to do what we wanted during those late night hours.