On one of my grade-school birthdays, me and my friends made pizza. Our dog had escaped a few days ago, and while playing outside, we found him running along the opposite shore of the creek. Dad went and got him.
Ever since I moved into my current place, my landlady has promised to make my favorite meal on my birthday (she does that for everyone in the house). I didn’t really know what I wanted, but I knew I loved her mashed potatoes, so I asked for some of them.
She came through with a full Thanksgiving dinner, on my 40th birthday. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pie…
The most memorable birthday for me was my brother’s 6th birthday. We hosted a party at our house and invited some of his schoolmate friends to attend. His birthday happens to be July 21st and the year was 1969, which was the day all the newspapers announced that man had landed on the moon. To honor the event, my mother baked a moon cake complete with frosting craters and placed several plastic astronauts and a flag on the cake too. I confess I felt a bit jealous during my own fifth birthday a month later, as I had no party and did not get any moon cake.
You were in grade school when Putin invaded the Ukraine?
Damn. Putin was in grade school when I was in grade school.
My own memorables are back to back, my 20th and 21st. The 20th because I was unravelling and massively disappointed and not at all ready to be 20 because there were all these things that were supposed to happen while I was a teenager and mostly hadn’t, and I was staring at the prospect that my life was going to be pretty awful moving forward. And next year, the 21st, because I’d figured some important stuff out in the intervening year and in fact had just come out about a week before, so I was ready to be an adult and looking forward to taking on the world.
For reasons, I was going to university at night school in my late 20’s and I saw they had a college-level one-year study-abroad program, with home-stay accommodations, that I could afford. So I signed up for it, saved my pennies, and woke up on the morning of my 30th birthday at a youth hostel in Japan. First time in Japan, first time abroad in fact.
My most memorable was definitely my 18th. For starters, of course, 18 is a pretty significant birthday anyway, but there were a few things that made it even more so.
First, that evening was the second performance of a school play that I was in (aside: In my experience, the second performance is always the best one, in amateur theater). It was a murder mystery, and my character gets shot on stage. The first night, I had the blood squib in my shirt pocket, and it was supposed to break when I clutched my chest, but that didn’t work. So the second night, I had it in my jacket pocket, and slipped it into my hand just before, and squeezed as I clutched my chest. Well, it turns out that you need a lot less blood in a squib than you think: It covered absolutely everything on half the stage (except none on my shirt). The crowd went wild.
Then, after the play, my two closest friends at the time (who were also at the show, of course) came back to my place for a more private party. One of them gave me a pack of Magic: the Gathering cards (a hobby we were all three into), and the pack turned out to contain a Shivan Dragon, at the time the most valuable card in publication.
The next morning, a Saturday, I got together with all of the guys in my Boy Scout troop. We met at the field where we usually played sports in the summer, and also there were a neighbor of mine and his circle of friends, who had previously bullied me. Well, with two different friend-groups at the same field at the same time, the natural thing was for us to play a pickup game of football against them. They beat us pretty thoroughly, but cleanly (no fouls or anything), and since that day that neighbor never bullied me again.
I was turning 22, I was renting a bedroom which was actually a slightly upgraded backyard shed, working at a wholesale cactus nursery. I loathed the couple I was renting from, I hated my boss, and I had developed an equal animus toward cactus. I was living alone (as opposed to communally with friends) for the first time in my life, and was spending my birthday all by myself with my fingers full of hair-like spines I could not get out.
I’d gotten home from work and was thinking that I may as well get ready for bed, when I heard voices, and then a knock on the shed door. It was a gang of my friends, with a disheveled chocolate cake, and what I remember as a hip flask of whiskey. They crammed themselves into my shed and a great time was had by all.
I’ve got two, a year apart. The first was my 29th birthday. I’d been talking DaveW and found out that he was taking his wife to a B&B the weekend of my birthday. I talked him into making that B&B in Philly so we could all get together. We invited sadillac to join us. and just have a great time for my birthday. What I didn’t know was that Sal, Dave and Rich (Verrain, for those who know all these old Dopers) flew Persephone out and Euty drove over to meet us. It was the best birthday surprise I could have ever asked for. We went to a small local restaurant that was BYOB, drank 3 or 4 bottles of wine between us and just had a fantastic time.
The next year, when I turned 30, Rich and Meros were planning a surprise party for me at one of our favorite watering holes. One week before my birthday was when Persephone passed. They didn’t know if I’d want to have a party with her loss so fresh, so they told me what they’d been planning. I turned my 30th birthday party into a wake for Cristi instead. We met in a room called the Coffin Room at the bar/restaurant (and boy, didn’t I have to assure the bartender that yes, we knew what the coffin room was and yes, the person we were holding the wake for would have loved it). I think we had at least 20, probably more people there. Some were there for my birthday, but most were there because of their love for Cristi. It was beautiful and funny and so much a tribute to her that now, almost 20 years later, I can still remember every bit of it that I was sober for.
Some of us kids used to spend two weeks near the end of each summer with relatives in the Intermountain West. Then we’d get picked up by the 'rents who did a quick visit with those relatives and then “went home”. They actually went to Reno and didn’t want the holy rollers to know that.
So one birthday I spent it in a cheap motel in Sparks. (“When Reno is too classy for you.”) No cake or anything. My only present was a silver dollar, which for some reason I still have.
Well, that was fun. Most birthdays as a kid weren’t much better.
Then there was the birthday when I was released from hospital two days after emergency surgery. Since I got released early in the day it doesn’t really count as a full birthday experience. But at least the nurses gave me cake.
When I turned 18 my Aunt and her friends insisted on taking me “clubbing.” It was underwhelming, I really don’t get the appeal, it’s so loud your can’t think or talk, and I hate club music… but they dressed me up and I was excited until I got there, at least. I still have a photo of that night. They made me up to be kind of gothic which is fair enough - I have really pale skin. In the photo I’m practically glowing. And it was a gay nightclub and I somehow still got hit on by an older straight man.
Spousal unit planned a surprise party of sorts for one of my late-30s. The company he worked for in Jacksonville had a condo on the beach and he rented it for the weekend (it was January, so not a high-demand time.) We’d gone out to dinner with a couple of friends and their kids, plus our daughter. We all headed to the condo, then the friends were going to keep our daughter overnight for us.
While we were hanging out, my husband got a phone call and he and his friend (also a coworker) claimed there was a problem at the plant and they needed to go. So there I was with the friend’s wife (she was OK, but it’s not like we were close buds) and 4 kids - so happy birthday to me.
Then all of a sudden, the door opens, and some other friends were there with the two husbands, so yeah Happy Birthday To Me!!
Dang, that was more than 30 years ago! And it was especially memorable because I tend not to bother with birthdays - it’s just not a big deal to me.
I don’t really remember any of my birthdays except one, and it’s a negative memory.
For some reason, probably because I begged for it, my mom gave me a real birthday party in a park with punch and cake and invited friends. It was fun, but I got practically no presents at all. When I bemoaned this at home later that day, my mom said “That party cost almost ten dollars!” My response was “So?” I was only about nine or ten, and didn’t know much about money, nor was I cognizant of the fact that my mom was a Depression baby and ten dollars seemed like a fortune to her. She was furious with my flippant answer and sent me to my room for the rest of my birthday.
It still seems to me like ten bucks wasn’t that big a deal, even in 1966!
My 13th birthday, which fell on Friday the 13th. My brother gave me a brand new J.C. Higgins .22 bolt action rifle that he ordered from Sears. A complete surprise and I was thrilled. I recently gave it to my grandson with the stipulation that he never kill anything with it.
When I was in my early teens, I was supposed to have a pie for my birthday. I don’t remember exactly why – I’m not opposed to cake – but maybe I was just in a piesort of mood. It didn’t matter though since I got sick during the day and spent the evening in bed. The next day, the pie was gone. My mother and sister had eaten it all and I was pretty upset. In retrospect, I assume my mother cut into it to have some while it was fresh and my sister scarfed down the majority of it. Either way, no birthday pie.
This wasn’t really so much a tragic and damaging family betrayal (though at the time I was pissed) so much as an opportunity to play the “Remember when it was my birthday and you ate ALL my pie while I laid sick…” card at least once a year for the past 30+ years. I got a lot of mileage out of that missing pie, far more than if I had eaten it!
(To be clear, I have a good relationship with both and it’s more a joking guilt thing when debating who gets to bring the best Thanksgiving leftovers home, etc)
My gf turned 50 when we were in St Martin one year (14 years ago, time flies!). Everywhere we went I told people it was her birthday and everywhere we went she was given free drinks. I was kept busy as her support person. I had a great time just accompanying her.
At the time of my 30th birthday I was running the mail room for ChiCon 4. The convention office was an apartment, and one of the bedrooms was “my office” where I handled all the incoming mail, made and distributed copies of both incoming mail and internal documents, and kept all my files… My birthday was about a week before the opening of the convention, which meant there was a lot of work that needed to be done, so I had decided to spend the day trying to get it cleared up. Of course, other staff people were also working there, so in order to work uninterrupted I kept the door closed. As the day went on I started grumbling to a friend who was helping me about the noise level, and occasionally he would step out to talk to them about it. He also made sure that I stayed in the room so I wouldn’t get distracted/
Finally I finished up what needed to be done, and started putting things together so I could go home and try to salvage the rest of my day. When I stepped out of the room I was greeted by shouts of "Happy Birthday! The place was decorated, and there was a cake. I had been so busy working that I hadn’t even realized what had been going on in the rest of the apartment. I looked at my friend, who grinned and set, “Gotcha!”
