The summer when I was seven, my first pajama party was hosted at my family’s new house in the suburb with my two childhood best friends. We were friends from our time in the community of tiny half-dilapidated apartments, and by that time, not only our mothers but also our fathers had become good friends. A few times a year, we would all gather at one of our houses for a fun potluck party.
That day, my parents invited everyone for another potluck party, and when the evening was over, my friends’ parents and younger siblings went back home while my friends stayed with me.
“Be a good girl and have fun!”
They all departed merrily, and once we were alone, my friends and I started jumping with excitement. It was already past midnight, but we were wide awake. Being together and up at this late hour alone made us feel ecstatic.
“Hurray, this is our pajama party!”
We all shouted as we jumped down on the floor from the sofa, imagining that we were diving into the ocean.
“Hey, hey, you’re being too excited,” my father passed by and said to us. “Did you already forget what you were told?”
But we couldn’t stop giggling and laughing. Eventually, my mother brought us upstairs to our bedroom and told us to sleep.
The next morning, my mother came back to wake us up. As we changed into our day clothes, my mother told us how she could observe the personality of each of us from the way we slept. She said that one of my friends was sleeping on her side with her hands under her ears, looking like a princess. The other one was sleeping peacefully in a straight posture.
“How about me?” I asked my mother eagerly when she finished the description of the other two. I wanted to know if I also looked like a princess when I was sleeping.
“You? You were sleeping like this!”
My mother stretched her arms and opened her mouth. It looked more like a wild girl than a princess.
“No, I didn’t sleep like that!” I protested immediately, but my mother just laughed.
Utterly embarrassed, I didn’t say anything anymore. Thankfully, that was the end of that topic, and my mother instructed us to come down for breakfast when we were ready.
It was such a fun pajama party, and yet, that one comment about my sleeping posture left me with a bitter taste that morning. For a seven-year-old girl who was having her first pajama party of her life, it was important that she looked as cute as her friends when she slept, and I was so disappointed by the picture of a girl sleeping with her arms and mouth wide open.