Slumber Party

The new push around the communal home is for less swearing. (For those of you keeping track at home, we now have six adults living here, albeit some only temporarily - Mom, Jack, Me, Tony, Levi and Christine, Tony's mom. It's Jersey Shore with a lot less gym and tanning. But more laundry.)

Anyhow, upset with the amount and quality of profanity in the house, Mom issued an edict that we should all try to be a little more...intellectual in our discourse with each other. Keep in mind that my soft-spoken and mostly well-behaved mother used to have a mouth like a trucker, which you can still bring out in her IF she's properly enraged. However, she never swore that much in public and never casually. Just when she was angry. You won't like her when she's angry.

Somewhere along the line, though, things got a little off-course. Instead of sounding more intellectual, we merely sound weird. Perhaps we'll adjust. Perhaps we're just resisting the change. Perhaps it was Mom's choice of substitute for every swear word.

She chose "slumber party."

So now, JUST now, I had to refer to something as a "pain in my slumber party." Tony, five minutes ago, referred to someone he met while showing his mom the sights as a "slumberpartying idiot." Levi kicked open the door to the library last night, shouting "what the slumber party is going on in here?" (Which, as an aside, is not actually necessary, because the library has glass doors. He could see Mom and Jack watching TV. He's just a slumber party.)

To be honest, I'm not sure how long this experiment will last. The novelty will surely wear off soon and it has to be odd to hear a group of adults continually referring to a "slumber party." Outsiders probably think we're some weird pajama cult that sleeps in the high school gym in our Barbie sleeping bags.

Until then, I'm going to keep my slumber partying mouth shut and take this like a man.