Last Word

Remember when having sleepovers with your friends was the most fun thing ever? Hanging out all night, eating breakfast together -- it was the pinnacle of a good time.

I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers until I was six, and my first few attempts at sleeping at friends' houses ended with my mom picking me up at 10PM. I just didn't like not sleeping at home. Sleepovers were really fun up until the point where the other person drifted peacefully to sleep in their own bed with their own stuff and their own parents nearby, and I laid there on the trundle feeling wide awake and not peaceful at all. 

Eventually I got over this problem, because I was older, and more mature, and didn't want people to make fun of me after I left. But my least favorite part of the sleepover was still the part where the other people fell asleep and I did not. (Apparently it takes me longer to fall asleep than anyone else in the world. Ever.)

It usually went the same way. We would be talking about something, and then I would say something and there would be no response because the other person was asleep. This was followed by that creepy feeling of talking to yourself, and no matter your last statement had been, hanging there in the air with no one to hear it, it felt like the stupidest thing you ever said. Example, circa 1995:

ME: That "Can't Hardly Wait" is so funny.

FRIEND: Yeah, I loved it.

ME: We should go see it again.

FRIEND: Yeah.

ME: Jennifer Love Hewitt is really pretty.

FRIEND:   -------------------------

Well great. Now the last thing I said was "Jennifer Love Hewitt is really pretty" which sounds weird, and I'm not sure if my friend is asleep or if she is just so uncomfortable with my sudden profession of love for JLH that she doesn't know how to respond. Now I am just going to lay here thinking about what a stupid thing that was to say for the rest of the night. 

I got so paranoid about having the last word at sleepovers that I started dropping out of conversations early and pretending to be asleep. This gave me the unique opportunity of listening to other people have the last word and that weird period self-consciousness that would follow it. 

Occasionally I would feel badly and come back, responding to them to keep the conversation going for a little while. But having just had a close-call, the other person would inevitably fall asleep as fast as she could, leaving me with the last word once again. Thus I learned: show no mercy. 

Nowadays I have a sleepover every night with my spouse, but the last word is not a concern. We usually just say "good night" and go to sleep simultaneously because sleep is like a rare, precious jewel neither of us wants to waste.

But I am always the last to fall asleep.