Saturday night

When I was young, all of those years ago, Saturday night always seemed special.  Now, here I am on a Saturday night.  My husband is surfing on the computer across from me.  We haven’t said much to each other for about an hour.  When I shared a blog entry that I found amusing, he didn’t respond.  He doesn’t have the same sense of humor that I have; in fact, I think he has a very limited sense of humor these days.  Not sure what is happening there.  Now I am quiet.

So, this is the exciting Saturday night of old age.  I can hear some of the neighborhood kids, outside playing.  I remember those nights as a kid.  We would be out until dark, and begged to be able to stay out after dark.  We played a game called “Starlight, Moonlight”, and often just laid out on the grass and watched the stars in the sky.  I spent my first years growing up  in a small city where the neighborhood all knew each other.  The mothers got together for coffee each morning, and  all of the kids knew each other.  We had a pretty small area where we played, but we could be out from first thing in the morning until dark, with just the lunch and dinner breaks when we had to be home.  In one of the towns where I lived, there was a siren at the firehouse that blew at noon, 6pm and 10 pm.  Those were signals for every kid to be home.  We all were. On Saturday nights, we had to be at home, but we often stayed up late.  I remember my parents taking us to the drive-in movies, with a big bag of popcorn in the car, dressed in our pajamas so we could fall asleep and then just be taken in to bed when we returned home.  That was a big treat.  Having my dad carry us into the house and put us to bed, rather than having to walk into the house on our own, was a treat.  I remember pretending to be asleep so that he would carry me into the house. 

Of course, we had to get up on Sunday morning for church, at least until school was out.  We didn’t go to church much during the summer months.  That made Saturday night even more special.  We would get up on Sunday mornings and my dad would be home from work, and sometimes HE made breakfast, instead of my mom.  That was quite amazing for us kids.  My mom would sleep in on the Sunday mornings we didn’t go to church.  My dad would sit in a chair in his underwear and read the paper.  We were used to it, but as I got older, I was mortified by this habit. 

As a teenager, I looked forward to Saturday nights for different reasons. I didn’t date much, but my friends as I would get together and “drive around”.  The town where I lived as a teenager, was designed in a square.  We could drive down main street, up the street at the end of main street, across the street at the edge of town, and down the highway back to main street.  Everyone who was anyone in town drove around town in that square, checking out who was out and with whom.  We had a route we followed to check on everyone we knew, to see what they were doing that night.  At times, there would be several cars together stopped on one of the streets, the occupants talking out the windows to each other.  The town cop made the rounds about every hour to keep things from getting out of hand, and to keep traffic moving.  Once in a while there was a party, and everyone would pass along the information, and the cars would find their way to the house where the party was held.  I had no particular curfew, my parents trusted me and I didn’t disappoint them.  But my friends had midnight curfews, so I would get home then, too. 

Fifty years later, a Saturday night.  It has just gotten dark.  I am almost ready to go to bed.  The dog is waiting at my feet to follow me into the bedroom.  He doesn’t realize that Saturday nights used to be different.

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