Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Saturday Nights Through the Decades

On Sunday over here, there’s this thing we do. Write for five minutes about whatever you feel like dumping (the good, the bad, or the ugly), but don't edit it before pushing publish. I’d like to give a shout out to my auto-correct today for fixing my misspellings and not replacing them with the usual nonsensical stuff.

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Boy have my Saturday nights changed over the last quarter century. 

We first stayed in on Saturday nights because or kids were little and, frankly, we didn’t have the money for either a babysitter or TGI Fridays. We added ground beef to Ragu, poured it over spaghetti, made some toast, and called it dinner. They loved it! Maybe at ten o’clock when the kids were finally down, we’d have a bottle of beer. Some of the best Saturday nights of our marriage were spent like this.

When we couldn’t get our kids to stop growing so fast, so we rode the roller coaster of activities. Saturday night meals were often rotating drive-thru fast food, or whatever snacks I had in the back of the Suburban. We were a family on the run. Some of our best family memories were during this whir.

Then high school hit hard and our Saturday nights were spent organizing driving shifts with other parents. Maybe sneaking in a quick dinner out or a movie then playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors” for who would wait up. Because the curfew sheriff was always awake. Most Saturdays we wished the kids had their driver’s licenses already.

Wow, was ignorance bliss because once they did, Saturday nights meant no chance of rest until the keys were hung back up. And fingers crossed that curfews were made because who feels like playing “Bad Cop” at midnight, though we would if we had to. We were lucky here.

Being an empty nester, Saturday nights feel a little like being a kid in a candy store. Though whhat we secretly longed for was a text to know how you were. (I’m just being nice. We don’t worry about it all that much.) Wanting to know you are safe.

But still, ironically, the very best Saturday night feeling in the world may be having your kid tucked safely under the covers of their own bed and relishing in the chance to walk past their door, again, with the opportunity to peek in. 

That was my Saturday night last night.