Provo, UT

For a girls’ night one Friday night, my roommates and I dressed up as superheroes—not specific ones, you understand, but ones we made up. That’s right. We went shopping for outfits at DI and Charlotte Russe, looking for gaudy gold jewelry, crazy tank tops and belts, short skirts and leggings, and yes, even capes. (Both stores have really cheap selections of these things.) When the day finally arrived, we painted masks on each other with old Halloween paint. Then, after a stop at some friends’ apartments to show off our outfits, we headed out.

Our first stop was Classic Skating on State Street in Orem. We thought they were open until midnight, so we got there at 9:25 and found out they actually closed at 10:00. (This worked out in our favor because they gave us half-priced tickets, and we probably wouldn’t have skated much longer than that anyway.) We took off some of our accessories for safety purposes—namely the capes—and went out to the rink to have a fabulous time; we danced as well as we could on wheels, fell down, almost killed/got killed by many small children who were zooming about recklessly on their scooters, and got heckled by some 14-year-olds as we were leaving. We got lots of smiles and waves from families who were also out enjoying themselves.

We were all starving after such strenuous activity, so we rounded up the male troops (friends and guys in our apartment building) and met up at Denny’s in Provo (right by the Courtyard Marriott on University Parkway and Freedom). Naturally we received lots of strange looks and questions, the most common of which was “Why are you dressed up like superheroes?” We had one answer to that, and it was “Why not?”

This girls’ night was one of my favorite nights out ever—we had a blast getting ready, and we had even more fun laughing at ourselves and at other people’s responses to our crazy getups. I would absolutely recommend this activity for families, especially those with small children (but hey, if you can get your teenagers to do it, more power to you!). Kids love dressing up, and what adult isn’t a kid at heart? And when you’re dressed up like this, it doesn’t matter where you go—you’re taking the activity with you. Go roller skating, see a movie, play at the park, walk around the grocery store, do anything! If you put enough thought into it, you could do the entire evening without spending a dime. So take a night to forget about all the things you worry about during the week, and just have some fun!