I decided to fake sick the day my family left for Bloomsburg University to see my sister. It’s the ideal situation, I figured. My mom, dad, and sister get to spend time together with me out of the way and I have the house to myself over Memorial Day weekend. I could get away with just about anything my mind could think of, except homicide. Friday night, I opted to chill. No work, no thinking, just good food and some quality episodes of Hey Arnold. Some of my fondest memories involve me watching Nickelodeon as a tot, stuffing Townhouse crackers down my throat and sucking Sunny D out of a sippy cup. There was no pressure to succeed and have a lot of friends; my parents weren’t crying about their financial mistakes and rubbing their sorrow off onto me and my sister. We were all doing stuff together, and not thinking about anything but what was going on at that very moment. Now though, my dad’s working two jobs and my mom dropped her “stay at home” status to become a wannabe entrepreneur. Her latest thing is posting ads all over Philadelphia, saying she’ll do any sort of job for you. So, basically, a work prostitute, or maybe even just a straight up prostitute. I don’t know. I don’t wanna.


So I sort of planned this big Memorial Day weekend party for a while, and I invited about 100 people. Even though I could basically invite the entire class, I opted to be somewhat selective, you know, so that the people who got invited would feel a little bit special and more inclined to come. Also, my tool shed of a house can’t handle 700 kids. But 100 people, that’s a solid head count, and I set the Facebook event page so that people could invite their friends, so maybe even more people would come.

Twelve people are going -- that’s what the Facebook event page said on Saturday, the day of the party. I don’t get it. I told people in the event info that my parents won’t be there, and I even gave the event a clever title. I mean come on; it’s hard not to appreciate a notification that reads “Bobby Guinness invited you to ‘a party.’” What did I do wrong? I decided to cancel the party, and spend the weekend like I usually do.