It so happened that at the age of seven I was to have my first sleepover -- at my pal Wayne Matsuura's house, across the street from me on 19th Avenue S.E. in Minneapolis.
Wayne and I had been friends ever since my memories began. There never was a time when we weren't pals -- thick as thieves, our mothers described us somewhat sourly. I had to be actively discouraged from hanging around Wayne's house at all hours of the day and night. I would have gladly taken all my meals there; Mrs. Matsuura served rice every night with great lumps of tangy sauteed meat and vegetables, with sweet pickled daikon on the side. A notoriously picky eater, her cooking seemed to me to be the complete opposite of my mother's bland Midwestern hash from leftovers and tuna casseroles. Looking back, I'm sure I hurt her feelings many a time by baldly asserting that I wished I could eat over at the Matsuura's every day, because Mrs. Matsuura really knew how to cook. Consideration for the feelings of others was never my long suit as a child. It still isn't, sixty years on.
I had angled for a sleepover at Wayne's house for more than a year, throwing out broad hints about how clean and comfortable his basement was -- filled with bean bag chairs, a ping pong table, and a workbench where Wayne fiddled with a crystal set he ordered from Boys Life magazine that promised to bring in the broadcast wonders of India and Patagonia but only managed a scratchy reception of the local U of M student radio station KUOM. He also had a fine and orderly chemistry set, with rows upon rows of crystals and chemicals and gooey liquids and reams of litmus paper -- unlike my own chemistry set, which I had managed to incinerate during a particularly daring experiment with Clorox bleach and powdered manganese.
And there was a chest freezer, too -- chock full of Fudgesicles. I knew better than to aspire to sleeping up in Wayne's bedroom -- we weren't even allowed to play with his chaste Lincoln Logs up there. But the basement, and the Fudgesicles, would do just fine.
Came the day when all my finagling paid off and I was invited to spend Friday night sleeping over in the basement. Puffed up with an unseemly pride, I grandly told my sisters that I would not be taking my ease with them in our shared bedroom that night -- I had made other arrangements. Sue Ellen chose to snigger at my social coup, wounding me deeply by implying my old bedwetting proclivity would probably return to haunt me. Snubbing her completely, I gathered up my bedding and the cheap plastic crucifix that hung above my bed (I was not really religious, but I was deeply superstitious.) Then I marched over to Wayne's house as the sun began to set.
We spent the evening constructing a robot out of some old cardboard boxes that Mr. Matsuura kept under the basement stairs. Not having anything for legs, we put it on roller skates. Wayne dumped a bundle of loose wires and some spark plugs he got from out in the garage into the trunk of our robot. We tacked yellow rubber gloves on each side for arms. The shoe box head we filled with a large dirty sponge from the laundry sink -- it looked remarkably like all the illustrations of the human brain we had ever seen in encyclopedias. And then Wayne bored two holes in the shoe box for eye sockets and stuck in two pen lights he kept on his work bench. He turned them on, and our robot seemed to come to life, with his eyes glowing eerily straight ahead. I had the unfortunate inspiration to draw in a mouth with large fangs with a Magic Marker. Wayne and I stepped back to inspect our handiwork.
"Looks pretty good" said Wayne.
"Sure does" I agreed. " I bet our robot could beat Frankenstein if we could start it up with a big ol' battery."
This gave Wayne an idea. He shook the Eveready batteries out of his dad's electric lamp and put them inside the trunk of the robot.
"It could even beat the Wolfman now" said Wayne.
"Yeah" I replied uneasily, "if it was alive, you mean. But it's not. It's just a hunk of junk, really -- isn't it?"
"Oh, I dunno" replied Wayne speculatively. "There's lots of wires in there that might pick up the electricity from the battery and start somethin' up. It might make him move around a bit tonight. Maybe."
I gulped, audibly.
"Naw" I said with a bravado I did not feel. "Your mom'll make us take it apart tomorrow anyway before she gives us breakfast, I bet."
But Wayne was in a mood to give vent to weird fancies.
"What if it started to move tonight after we fell asleep? What if it rolled right over to us and tried to make us robots, too? With some sort of radioactive ray."
We both relished the cheap, hair-raising sci-fi movies that were the main fodder of drive-ins back then. Most of 'em featured some kind of fiendish ray from Dimension X that would turn anyone, even sweet little boys like us, into insane zombie monsters. I didn't care for Wayne's current train of thought, and attempted to divert his attention into more cheerful paths.
"How many Fudgesicles you think we can sneak out of the freezer tonight?" I asked hopefully. But Wayne was not to be distracted.
"Maybe we should put a bottle of calcium chloride inside, next to the battery -- that would sure give it super powers if it started up."
I was beginning to dislike our corrugated creation very, very much.
Suddenly Wayne exclaimed: "I've got it! I'll put my crystal set inside it so it can have telepathic powers. Give us orders to build a flying saucer to go to Mars or somethin'."
That's all I needed to hear. A killer robot let loose in the basement, hypnotizing me with radioactive rays and talking me into going to Mars to become a slave. My nervous bladder was ready to void in terror. I picked up my bedding and crucifix, told Wayne I had a belly ache, and scampered across the street to the safety of my own robot-less bedroom.
I was never invited to another sleepover again. But I didn't really mind. Wayne had revealed all the mental instability of a mad scientist that evening, and I didn't intend to be murdered in my sleep by one of his mechanical creatures or wake up with an extra head sewn onto my shoulders. When we graduated from high school I joined the circus and Wayne went to work at the Sears warehouse. Where they had plenty of cardboard boxes . . .
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