A Lawrenceville Boba Friendship Faced Its Big Test: A Sleepover

Splitting a delivery fee is a friendship with a clear contract. Each of you pays half, and the tea arrives. A sleepover invitation has no fine print at all.

Then her head of house announced a sleepover in Stephens House, where boarders could invite day students. She hesitated. A friendship that had started with sharing orders to cut the delivery fee, she worried, might be too superficial for an overnight invitation. She wasn't sure whether she was overthinking it. She decided to take the risk, asked, and her friend said yes.

I have spent forty-eight years overthinking invitations. I once asked a neighbor over for a barbecue three times, in rising tones of casualness, and on the third attempt he said, kindly, "You've asked."

They stayed up until three in the morning. It began with rewatching every episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty and turned into confessions of their deepest secrets, discussions about life, and their plans for who they wanted to be in ten years. One small invitation, she wrote, had let them be vulnerable with each other, and changed her mind about what the House system was for.

Lawrenceville's own description of student life puts Houses at the center: every student belongs to one, day students included, with faculty living in the residences as teachers, coaches, advisers and chaperones.

The school can build the House, assign the chaperone and schedule the sleepover. It cannot ask your friend for you. That part is still yours, and so is the delivery fee.

The middle one has a friend from his robotics team he has known for two years, mostly through a shared interest in one brand of chips. Last week he asked him over. He spent an hour beforehand rehearsing it. The friend said, "Sure," before he finished the sentence. They are now planning their lives in ten years, and they would like more chips.