Hot Diggity Dog

Nowadays, my home isn’t like that. At all. I hear puttering in the kitchen at one a.m., the phone frequently rings late at night, and I hear words spoken in the whispered shrieks only a teen can master, things like, “My mom finally said I could cut my uniform shirt and just have the collar to go under my sweater,” and the response: “OMG, you’ll finally feel like a normal freshie!”

Growing up, we certainly didn’t chop up our $35 uniform shirts so that we could just wear the collar under our uniform sweaters. We had way more respect for our expensively stiff and dowdy uniforms to do that. There was zero night activity in my household. That was just the way it was, which made it all the more shocking when one morning my older sister casually remarked that the night before, while I was fast asleep, the family had a spontaneous hot dog party at 11 p.m.

Say what?

A party at 11? Us?

“Why,” I sputtered, “eleven is after ten, and we never do anything exciting after ten!”

I burst into tears and ran to my mother for an explanation. She told me that since my two sisters and my parents (basically everyone but me) had suffered from insomnia the night before, they had an impromptu joint snack.