Sleep-Over at Miss Martha's

Forty three years ago, give or take a few months, I reached a milestone in my life. I was going to my very first sleep-over. If you've ever been in that position and I know most of you have, I don't have to tell you how excited I was. I was to be an overnight guest in the home of Miss Martha Porter, along with a few other girls. I think I began packing my clothes in a brown paper bag days before the actual sleep over. I was taking a night gown, school clothes, tooth brush, socks and a bag of Butterfingers I had secretly snatched from the kitchen and saved for that special night.

My happiness about the sleep-over was overshadowed by a tiny bit of anxiety about being away from home. I had never spent the night anywhere except my Aunt Betty's or my grandparents and I didn't really know what to expect. I imagined all kinds of crazy things....what if Martha's mom was mean? What if her daddy was a monster? What if their food wasn't good? Food was a priority for me even way back then. What if I wet the bed and Martha told the entire second grade? What if they were Baptist? Everyone in our family was Church of Christ and until I started school I had never met a Baptist or a Methodist. I remember one of the girls in class telling me she was Presbyterian. She might as well have said, "I'm a Martian". The shock value would have been the same. I worried for days that she was going straight to hell just for saying the word Presbyterian, let alone claiming to be one. I was pretty sure Martha wasn't a Presbyterian because she seemed normal and looked pretty normal except for being really skinny. I pushed my worries aside and looked forward to the big night.

Finally the day of the sleep over arrived, I got on the school bus with my brown paper bag and headed out for a big adventure. Somehow I made it through the school day, but not without bragging about how I was spending the night with Martha. Everybody in the second grade knew my plans. After school a group of second grade girls showed up at Martha's where things were going just fine until parents started arriving to pick up their children, before I knew it I was alone with Martha and her kid sister, who was even skinnier than she was. It was at this point that I started rethinking the whole "spend the night" thing.

I hung in there until dark but as nice as Martha's momma was....she wasn't my momma. I began to cry like a big baby and before I knew it Martha's daddy, who by the way turned out not to be a monster, was on the phone with momma who was giving him directions to our house, where he dropped me off a few minutes later. My big adventure turned into a big disaster and the worst part of it was going to school the next day. Martha had arrived at school before me and she was good enough to tell everyone that her daddy had to take the crybaby home.

I was mortified about not staying the entire night and I was worried that Martha was not going to be my friend anymore. I had spent so much time planning, plotting and bragging about the sleep-over that it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't follow through. Over the years I've learned that no matter how well organized, planned and anticipated something is, there's always the possiblity that something will go wrong. And guess what? I still go to pieces when things don't work out, it's a character flaw that I accept. I am extremely grateful when things do work out as planned and even more grateful that bed wetting is no longer an issue for me.