Inspired by this thread, let’s hear about bad birthdays.
I’m not much for birthdays. When you’re a geek with few friends as a kid, you quickly learn to not want to make a big deal about birthdays. This continues to this day. I just don’t care, don’t particularly want any attention on my birthday.
However, for my 30th, I decided I did want to do something special, and let my friends know. So the big day came, and the big hour. Two of my friends showed up.
An hour and a half later, the rest turned up. There had been a happy hour for the college department they work in, so they all had been there. By the time they got to my place, they were tipsy or drunk. One fell asleep.
I had picked out a movie to watch and they said, “No, we’re not going to watch that.” I protested, claiming it was my birthday (I had done as much for them on their birthdays) but was somehoe outvoted.
By thirty minutes later I was ready to throw all but the first two out, I was fuming.
Since then, although I have gone to birthday events for these people, I haven’t gone out of my way for them. Petty, I know, but I’m still pissed about it. And I haven’t done anything to celebrate mine since. Thanks guys, I had assumed that 20 year old adults were somehow different from elemntary school kids.
My 45th. Hubby forgot it was my b-day until the card from his mother arrived.
He’d planned a meeting with his boss and another coworker, at our house, to draft a plan of action for the plant - boss was fired a month later, but that’s another tale… Anyway, when they broke for lunch, we all went out for pizza. And they continued to talk shop.
Once the meeting was done, hubby decided he’d take me into town for ice cream. We stopped en route for gas, and he got a beanie-baby-esque gasoline truck - the Shell station was giving them away with a fill-up. Touching, huh?
Birthdays really aren’t a big deal for me, but being forgotten like that kinda hurt. Ah well, I got over it…
Worst b’day: My 29th. I was in the hospital with a spinal-cord injury, trussed up and hanging from the ceiling by my heels, like a bat. One doctor with a good sense of humor brought me a pineapple upside-down cake.
Second-worst b’day: This past Friday. I had to cancel plans, as I was home with a disfiguring (and as of yet undiagnosed) facial rash.
I’m sure more hellish b’days are yet to come . . .
My 15th birthday, September 22, 1989 in Charleston, SC. Gale force winds, flash floods, felled trees, power outages, looting and martial law. Thanks Hurricane Hugo – you’re the best!
(Or instead of mother nature, maybe I should thank my parents for choosing not to evacuate?)
For my 15th birthday, my grandparents, cousin and I went on a fishing trip up to western Quebec. Sounds fun! 'Cept we got lost on the way, couldn’t call for directions because the Ontario phone services were on strike, and eventually made it there only for me to have a migraine every day but one of the trip. I did catch one fish though! We cooked it, I ate it, then got sick again. Brilliant!
My 17th birthday sucked. At the time my best friend (not for long) had another good friend who was jealous of me. Amy was convinced that we would all love each other if we spent enough time together.
My mom got together with Amy to plan a surprise party for me. Amy brought Debbie along. They filled out the invitations to about 15 of my friends, and Debbie volunteered to mail them. She didn’t.
The day came, mom and Amy had worked out a plan for my boyfriend to get me out of the house. I walked in to hear mom, my little sister, Amy, and Debbie shout surprise, and mom looked absolutely mortified.
I actually lost a lot of friends because of it - I pulled back because nobody had bothered to wish me a happy birthday, much less show up at the party. I was sure they hated me. It was over a year before I found out the truth.
Thirteen years later, birthdays aren’t that important to me, but it still pisses me off.
My 16th birthday was one of the worst days of my life. It was Sept. 5th 1996 and only 2 days prior my girlfriend at the time told me she was pregnent and was going to have an abortion. Keep in mind she didn’t ask my opinion on the matter she just told me that was what she was going to do. It was probably the best thing but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. So on my 16th birthday I spent the day sitting in a hospital while she was having some tests done that had to be done before she could get the abortion. Most people spend that day takeing thier driving tests to get thier lisence. I spent that day watching my girlfriend getting tests done so she could abort our child a week later. I’ve had other bad birthdays but nothing in my life compares to the bad day I had that day.
26th - The married woman I was madly in love with and was having unprotected sex with told me that her husband had herpes. (I’m clean).
37th - My girlfriend gave me a card, then left for work. That was it.
Two months earlier I had given her a card, sexual slavedom, made her favorite supper, sent her flowers at work and flown her brother up from Texas without her knowing about it. (She’s gone now - but for additional reasons.)
My 40th is this saturday. I’m going fishing with a buddy, hitting a hot springs, staying in a nice hotel and getting drunk (but not too drunk).
(Happy Thoughts, Happy Thoughts - I will not post to this thread on sunday.)
My worst birthday probably wasn’t that bad. I was renting a house with a friend, had lived there two weeks and on my 18th birthday I discovered that my unemployment payment had been cut to $25 a week for two weeks due to bungling by Social Security. My share of the rent was $45 a week… that was pretty miserable. I spent the day chasing around trying to work out how to get money together to pay rent, buy food and to cover my bus fare to my course each day for the fortnight. Not a lot of fun.
Well, I’m sure this year’s birthday will be dreadful, but the worst so far was my 25th. My then boyfriend forgot it was even my birthday, we spent the whole damn day at Ace Hardware buying poo green paint for some damn house he was going to paint and to make it that more miserable, I got a killer UTI and spent the night in the hospital ((WARNING TMI! blood and all, folks) crying in front of the ER docs and nurses. They were pretty cool, though, and at least sang me Happy Birthday.
You know, I hadn’t realized until I started reading this post that my last three birthdays have sucked. In fact, the same woman, whom I was not dating at either time, screwed up both of the last two (29 & 30). And the one before that (28), I went out with a woman, who knew it was my birthday, and she left with another man. A GAY man. Top that.
Well … I’ve not had anything on the scale of some of these posts – Juniper, my heart hurt to read yours – but my last birthday, which fell on a Tuesday, which is supposed to be my day off, I was at work (at the newspaper), because it was the presidential election, and I was there late because it was such a fiasco.
I would not have minded so much had I actually been needed, but I spent most of the day twiddling my thumbs, though later on I was constantly refreshing the cnn.com page and saying, “flip a coin or something already!!!”
I’ve always hated my birthdays so they were all bad. Actually anyones birthdays. In fact I hate the whole idea of having special days of the year. Mother’s day, Christmas, Arbor Day, you name it, bah humbug. So starting with my 7th birthday I informed my parents that I didn’t want to have anymore birthday parties. Although my mom always insisted that I have them even if it was just family. I assume she always thought I’d turn around but let me tell you, I am stubborn. A couple of years ago when I tried to off my 25th birthday party she got really upset, so upset that I caved. So for 19 years I’ve been forced to have parties that I didn’t want. Have cake I don’t like. Open presents that weren’t so bad. And all in all be forced into the spotlight.
But ahh, my last birthday. No party, no dinner. Only 2 cards. Best birthday ever.
BTW I know my future wife is going to absolutely hate this about me.
For my nineteenth birthday, the girl I’d been seeing and thought I was going to marry decided to break up with me via email. I then went out and got completely smashed on frozen Smirnoff (like thirty-six ounces straight from a go-cup while watching the Oscars in the lounge room of my uni). Vomiting ensued, as I hadn’t been able to eat anything all day. That was the year Braveheart won, I’m told–I sure as shit didn’t see it.
The two hours of dry-heaving up bile apparently lowered my resistance; I’m reasonably sure the lying on the floor of the shower where I’d dragged myself and turned the shower on didn’t help either. I contracted what was diagnosed as viral pharyngitis, got a 105 fever, spent the week in bed. Late assignments, not being able to go to fencing practice (which deked me from competing in a tournament I could have kicked ass in), not being able to talk in anything above a whisper–my, that was fun.
Telling this story did get me three pity f*cks about three months later, though. and I found out that the girl I actually married had also been vomiting in the toilet that same night. Kismet, no?
I’m 20 now and the last 6 have all been pretty bad for the same reason - my birthdays’s on New Year’s Day. Most people say ‘Cool, double celebration!’, but it’s not - EVERYONE forgets about me and celebrates the new year.
This year was the worst though, I drove 180 miles on New Year’s Eve to come down to Brighton to spend it with my housemats on a mad night out, but noooo, they wanted a night in getting drunk in front of the TV. Bastards.
I also only got one present and four cards.
My first wife took my son and left on my 30th birthday. A terribly depressing day. But in retrospect, except for my son leaving (who I see more now since I don’t have to work 2 jobs to try to keep up with her spending habits, but that’s another story), it was the best present she ever gave me.
