Sleeping Over with the Frenemy

Growing up, I was not a mean girl, but a mean girl mark. Not infrequently, I would get sucked into their orbit, like a bird into a jet engine.

Patty Allen was my friend in third grade, and as mean girls go, she was textbook. I liked having Patty as a friend, because when she wasn’t being vicious, she was a lot of fun.

I was skittish about sleepovers, and Patty knew this, so of course she kept insisting that I sleep over her house. There were several attempts ending in “stomachaches” and my mother having to come get me in the middle of the night. Patty appreciated the depth of my torment and shame, so she kept the sleepover invitations coming.

One day she enlisted me into whining so relentlessly that my mother caved, but on one condition: that she would under no circumstances come to get me. I pretended to be excited, but I knew I was doomed, and worse, complicit in sealing my fate.

That night, I lay in the twin bed next to Patty’s and was actually getting drowsy when Patty whispered that I should sleep with my legs together because after I fell asleep, her brother Buzz would sneak in to look under my nightgown to see my underpants. I remember the misery of that long night as I waited, legs locked, for Buzz, who predictably never materialized.

Patty moved to Michigan the summer after fourth grade, and we lost touch. Who knows? Maybe like me, she figured her shit out, and became a reasonable adult. I hope so. But thanks to her terrible childhood example, I was brought one step closer to understanding how healthy friendships work. They are rooted in trust, genuine desire for each other’s happiness, interest in each other’s lives and emotional well-being. Add to all this inside jokes, of course, and the fierce, unyielding opposite of the sadistic impulse to bring up Buzz.