Recently my son graduated from the slatted bars of his baby crib, to the wonders of a “Big Boy Bed”. During the experience of selecting and assembling his new sleeping quarters, I began reflecting on my childhood fascination with bunk beds. Whether seen as merely functional or in my case, “Fun-tional” everyone has had a run-in with these stacked modern marvels of the sleeping world. You may have even shared one with a snoring sibling or with a summer camp bunkmate who talked in their sleep, but allow me to tell you about my personal history with bunk beds during the 80s and 90s.

Having been born into a family where my siblings were already in high school at the time of my birth, there was seemingly no cause for any type of space-saving sleep device, whether bunk bed or the awesome comedic staple of the fold-down Murphy bed. By the time I was old enough to get my own bed my brother was already a college man, so I just inherited his room and twin sized mattress.  With no younger siblings on the way, it looked like I was destined to stay at ground level, but that didn’t mean I was completely unaware of the concept.

My friend, Erik was the most spoiled kid I knew, and in truth, I was probably better friends with his massive action figure collection than the boy himself. In addition to having every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or G.I. Joe a kid could want, he also had the world’s biggest bunk bed. You know how some kids get a race car bed and that sounds awesome? Erik had a full on double decker firetruck!

Literally, it was in the shape of a firetruck with wheels and a hood, the whole nine yards. The bottom bunk was like a slumber time fortress made of brightly painted wood, while the top bunk seemed as if it was almost touching the ceiling. The coolest part was that inside the hood was a toy chest you could access by opening the up the grill on the front or an opening at the foot of the bottom bunk. Erik filled his hood with dozens of stuffed animals including awesome icons like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Football My Pet Monster and even the wacky space alien crew from Michael Jackson’s Disneyland 3-D experience, Captain EO.

I think it bears mentioning that Erik was an only child, so to say the bunk bed was unnecessary is pretty accurate. To help his parent’s feel justified in their purchase, I often invited myself over for sleepovers on weekends to fill the vacant top bunk. It was during these evenings of luxury that I set my heart on someday getting a bunk bed of my own. It took a few years, but the dream did eventually come true.

As my 12^th birthday was approaching and seeing it as a bit of a milestone in my journey to manhood, I told my Mom that a bunk bed was just what the doctor ordered. Of course she felt it was kind of silly since I didn’t have anyone to share it with. I countered with my weekly plans to invite many friends over for sleepover fun, so that she would feel justified in such an expenditure. Never mind the fact that my friends rarely came by to hang out because we had no caffeinated soda, violent video games or R-Rated movies at my house to the tantalize the senses. But my dear, sweet mother relented and on my birthday just a month later, there was a glorious bunk bed sitting in my room.

I loved the blue painted metal that connected to form a private bunker for my nighttime activities, most of which involved sticking the pages of comic books into the frame of the top bunk for hands-free reading. Speaking of the top bunk, I slept in it once. I remember climbing to the top after it was first assembled and quickly realizing it was a long way down. I was a heftier kid at the time, so there was always the thought of my weight breaking through the flimsy metal under the mattress and sending me plummeting to the bunk below. This would have been more a source of embarrassment than actual physical injury. No fat kid wants that story getting around the schoolyard.

Really the greatest part of owning a bunk bed was the personal satisfaction of being like the kids on TV shows with their awesome bedrooms. It wasn’t that they all had bunk beds, but that the room was uniquely their own. Jamie Lawson from Small Wonder wasn’t sleeping on a second hand twin bed and neither were the Tanner girls from Full House. They all had awesome bed set-ups just for them, and now so did I. But as with most fads of childhood, it didn’t last long.

As I got ready to enter Junior High, I realized that the bunk bed was taking up valuable wall space where I could be putting up super hero posters and shelves full of collectibles. So by the time I turned 13 this prized item was disassembled and I asked for my old twin mattress back. Of course that year for my birthday I requested a gigantic drafting table to help accomplish my dream of becoming a self-publishing comic book artist. You wanna guess how long that lasted? Yeah, we had a garage full of over-sized furniture demanded by yours truly. Still, I always look back fondly on the bunk bed experience, as short as it was.

So tell me about your favorite bed from childhood. Was it a bunk bed? Racecar bed? Bart Simpson’s creepy clown bed?