Rerun Week: Photo Friday: Happy Birthday to Sonny Edition

Hey guys! I'm on vacation in Jamaica, but She Was a Bird never sleeps! I'll be rerunning some posts from months and years past that are just as fresh as when I wrote 'em! I hope you are entertained (possibly for the first, possibly for the second) time by these archived items! Next week I'll be back with news from the sunny Caribbean! Take care!

This post originally appeared on the blog August 10, 2012:

Good morning!! This post is going to have to do double duty as a Photo Friday and a Photo Monday...my birthday's right at the tip of next week, and I'm taking the day off from my hectic blogging schedule to laze around and watch Unsolved Mysteries/eat SweetTarts/have Bab indulge in my every whim/do the birthday thing. But before I leave you for the long weekend, here's a mid-century, birthday (!!) themed post from the Doris and Ray collection.

You guys met Sonny last week, right? Sonny is Doris's son from her first marriage. As I said previously, there are lo-o-o-ots of photos of Sonny. I found this when going through an album, and was just swept away on a tide of enthusiasm over all the little fifties' teenager things going on here, right out of American Bandstand! Take a look, and then we'll do some closeups. Click on the big photo for an even BIGGER photo and do your own i-spying!

Fourteen party guests is not a bad turnout for a fifteenth birthday party! I went to all the trouble of closing up on the cake to count the candles, and then realized, unlike his mother, who habitually leaves photos completely captionless, Sonny did a very good job of labeling not only who was in the picture but what the occasion was. Isn't it hard to believe a lot of these kids are in the fourteen-to-fifteen year old range? THE CLOTHES MAKE THEM LOOK SO GROWN UP. Also, look how cute their first names are: 

I also love the flourish under the event description, and the fact that Sonny has misspelled "occasion" as "occasition", which as far as I'm concerned, should be a word. Let's take some closeups of our Tiger Beat crowd here to look at details:

Here's the birthday guy with his best girlfriend, Lucille (right). Lucille would continue to figure large in group gatherings and formal occasions, but Sonny ended up marrying someone named Diane in the late sixties'. Too bad! What a cute couple! Dallene, the girl on his left, looks like an exact double for a young Betty Draper. Look at her charm bracelet! Her perfect hair! Her matching skirt-and-collar twinset! If I were Sonny's girlfriend, I might have told him not to invite her just on principle. Also, check out the carefree, laughing head floating between Dallene and Sonny. That's Richard, and I kind of love him already.

Here are two cases of fifties' ladies' eyewear. See the girl in the middle has someone's ring around her neck, just like the Elvis song? Looking at this picture and listening to that song is really fun, by the way. I'm doing it right now. The guy standing behind the two bespectacle junior misses has an embroidered chess pieces pattern on his shirt, a clothes choice I stand by 100%.

I love the incidence of felt circle skirts in this photo, as well! The girl on the right is cute with her de rigeur neckerchief (remind me to get into that fashion statement), wide white belt, and is that a brooch attached to the waist? Do you think it came with the belt? At any rate, it's super cute. I noticed that in spite of the girls' being dressed to the hilt, most boys are wearing jeans with their button-up shirts. Is this fifties' teenager casual? They still look more professional than a lot of people I've seen at work.

OH MAH GAWD, did you notice everyone's shoes? PENNY LOAFERS, AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE. And bobby sox! There's one rebel wearing saddle shoes (next to Sonny on the right, check out the group picture in closeup to see), but everyone else is doing this, and doing this, and doing it well.

I thought this was the same photo, but it's actually a "for safety" second shot, I guess in case someone was blinking in the first one. Well, someone wasn't blinking, but someone was DEFINITELY doing something different. Can you tell what it is before I spill the beans?

IT'S STEVE! Steve, you goon! What are you doing in this picture?!

Look how cute and serious he looks in the first one, and how utterly deranged he looks in the second one. I love it! I love it to pieces! Way to liven up the party, Steve.

Anyway, I have to scat for the weekend festivities, but I will see you guys on Tuesday, when I'll be all of one year older!

Have a good long weekend, I'll catch you on the other side!