The first person I would define as my best friend was a cheerful, much more outgoing gal named Talia, whom I was very close with during grades 1-3 (I moved several hours away towards the end of grade 3, and though we stayed in touch for a while afterwards, the distance eventually dissolved our friendship).
While I did sometimes have birthday parties with friends and classmates as a youngster, once the festivities of the day had wrapped up, it was the evening that I most looked forward to, because I knew that it meant a sleepover for Talia and I would get to share a one-on-one party of our own
Under the sweltering heat of a bright July night we’d haul our sleeping bags into the backyard, glasses of cream soda (my favourite pop) and bags of Cheeto Paws (both special occasion treats for me in a household where junk food was highly restricted most of the time) in hand we’d chat and giggle, share secrets, play mad libs, plan our future, count the stars, and listen to an orchestra of crickets mere feet away from our heads.
{Me and Talia, on the left in the colourful t-shirt, on my 8th birthday in July 1992. Yes, I was very, very short as a child. I adore how happy and full of energy we look here.}
With my birthday coming up once more in just three days, I can’t help but reflect fondly on memories of sleepovers – be they birthday ones with Tal or others enjoyed over the years with different friends, at their homes or my own – from my youth.
Slumber parties have always been a fantastic part of childhood, experienced by most all of us at least a few times (if not dozens or even hundreds, if you were a major social butterfly) throughout of life. Sometimes they may have involved just one friend, at others five, ten or more gals would gather together for a night of little sleep, movies, yummy food, games of truth or date, manicures, pillow fights, playing records (or CDs), building blanket forts, and repeatedly ignoring our parents’ instructions to "stop talking and go to sleep".
Sleep, after all, ironically, has never factored much into slumber parties. A point which is evident in the following series of vintage sleepover photographs captured by photographer Lisa Larseen for Life magazine back in 1954.
{All images via Life magazine's photo archives.}
There is such a relatable, timelessly fun quality to these images of teenage girls having a blast as they whittle away the hours of the night, doing just about everything but sleeping – well, for most of the evening at least!
I’m grateful for my childhood friends and the nights such as these that we shared. Now, mere days away from turning 28, I’d love nothing more than to gather all of my vintage loving blogging friends together for a celebration of our own.
As that’s not possible though, I hope you’ll join me in the jubilant spirit of sleepover goers everywhere and imagine we’re all gathering together in our favourite vintage jammies with as much junk food, mad libs, and classic movies we can possibly cram into one night of awesome slumber party fun.
