Secretly, we all fear having birthdays like the one in Sixteen Candles, where nobody shows up and we're forced to deal with how lonely we feel as people. But sometimes, people have things happen on their birthday that put Molly Ringwald to shame.
It stinks to have your special day go sour. Moreover, it hurts, that if whatever happened was bad enough, you will never be able to not associate your birthday with that awful thing.
u/samisatotallycoolguy asked:
What's your worst birthday memory?
Here were some of those answers:
Ruined By Parents
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My mother had just moved us in with our stepdad. It was summer; they met that winter and we moved in in the spring. Yanked us out of our schools and we went to tiny horrible local schools. It was a miserable time and my new stepdad was VERY unpleasant (and it escalated to emotional abuse quickly).
I was not allowed to have contact with any of my friends, the friends I grew up with. No email, nothing.
So they tell me I can have a small birthday party and invite my friends, the ones I miss and grew up with. I'm so excited. They make plans. I make plans. My parents have me clean the entire house and I do it all, happily; I finally felt heard!
The day before, after doing yard work because party, my mum calls me out to the garage and says she's sorry but the party won't be happening. She's contacted my friends parents and it's all off. Why??
My stepdad is having a friend to visit that day. On my birthday.
I was gutted.
The day of? My birthday is not acknowledged beyond a verbal happy bday at breakfast. To the point where when it finally came up during the visit with stepdads friend, this friend looks pretty appalled. "I didn't know it was your birthday" and he seemed so sad and confused.
That night my mum said she and my stepdad were going to a coffee place. I asked to come; maybe a donut? No. "You can stay here right?" That stupid pleading mom face where they ask your permission not to prioritize you.
It sucked. A super sweet 15 lol.
Definitely Not Great In The Moment
I had recently moved as a child and had a really rough time of getting friends. On my first birthday party there, I had 3 sorta-friends come over to our house. It was the first time I ever had my own friends over.
During the "happy birthday" song, my oldest sister came downstairs, shoved her hand into the middle of the cake my mom made, then left. I don't remember the consequences or if she even got any, but I remember that sinking feeling of embarrassment and hopelessness.
In the years to come, those friends did in fact become my best friends for a while.
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
My birthday last month. I was pretty depressed, everyone forgot my birthday, I got my period without any pads available, I forgot my lunch at home, and when I texted my friends asking if they still wanted to hang out after I had made some plans with them, it turns out they weren't able to show up anymore. So I took a bath, which broke the freaking faucet somehow, and then went to eat some of my birthday cake (made the day prior, and of which I had had only one slice) and discovered my brother had eaten it all. I know it's not super deep or anything, but that was a stupid day.
Nurses Need To Be More Qualified
On my tenth birthday, I broke my arm in P.E. from superman-ing into the cinder block wall. I might have had a concussion, but when I went down to the nurse, she sent me back to P.E. with an ice pack. Luckily, since it was my birthday, my mom was at the school to eat lunch with me, and diagnosed it in 2 seconds from asking me to hold her car keys and me not being able to. I had gone into shock and was pale as a ghost at this time.
Every year on my birthday, my mom gets a Facebook memory of a picture of me and the nurse, at the hospital, with my arm in a soft cast. Other than breaking my arm, my birthday was pretty great since I got the presents I wanted.
A Negligible Amount Of Money To Some
For my 11th birthday, i got my first camera, my dad took me to Argos to pick one out. He said the limit was £70, but the camera little me wanted was £85; it was this little Canon digital thing. He bought it then just came out with "Happy birthday J, because that camera was £85, you owe me £15." He said this in front of all of the staff, and continued to pester me for the money for another month before my mum found out what was going on and told him to stop.
Casual Violent Crime On My Birthday
Went to a friend's party on my birthday (my parents wouldn't let me have one), lots of people gatecrashed including a few rough lads who were smoking weed in the persons house, the persons dad who presumably owned the house came downstairs and politely asked them to leave, they told him to sod off and stabbed him.
But Why Do We Gender Bikes?
When I was 8, my godmother bought me a bike - a girl's bike - for my birthday. It was pink and had streamers.
She meant well. My parents explained that she chose it because it was the bike she always wanted when she was a little girl, but never got.
Still, it was hard as an 8-year-old boy to pretend I was happy with it knowing friends would tease me about it.
A Long List Of Disappointment
When I was little, one of my "friends" literally threw a screaming fit and clung on for dear life when her parents tried to get her out of the car to attend my party.
When I was 18, my mum forgot because it was also Easter, then I got stood up by the friends who were supposed to be meeting me at a bar.
There was also one year I'd just moved to a new city, knew nobody, so I took myself to the cinema for a Keanu Reeves film. The projector broke about ten minutes in.
Most of my birthdays have ended up being just forgettably mediocre.
The Last Laugh
Family forgot my 14th birthday. I quietly told them at the end of the day. My dad yelled at me for not speaking up sooner, while my mom denied she forgot and was just "waiting" for the surprise. The surprise was $10 in a brown sack lunch bag.
For context, that same year my sister's 15th birthday took place in a country club and she got a brand new car she wanted even though she couldn't drive for another year.
I got the last laugh though because I'm 100% independent from my family and happy, while my sister is 39, divorced, and has been living with my parents for the past 4 years to "save up" although she still spends all her and my parent's money on designer clothes.
Stolen
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Having a party the night before (to be like YAY happy birthday at midnight) and having my wallet stolen. I spent the entire next day, my birthday cancelling my cards and calling my friends to make sure no one had seen it anywhere or has it or know who might have it.
As a bonus, my birthday is September 11, so you can imagine how EVERYONE likes to point that out like I had no idea it's 9/11. "Hey your birthday is on 9/11" oh that's right! I forgot!
Ok, who is watching the clock? Those seconds aren't going to count themselves. The only way to understand time is to be its witness. Although that can get depressing. Let's focus on the light and cool.
History...
Calculate Figure It Out GIF by OriginalsGiphy"If you are an 80-year-old American, you have lived through approximately 1/3 of our nation's entire history."
Those Days...
"The 80s were 40 years ago."
"This is what messes me up because I was born in 82 and graduated high school in 2000 so for some reason my brain is stuck on the 80's being twenty years ago. The 70's thirty years ago etc etc. I have to stop and realize sometimes that my concept of how long ago things happened is way off."
Time goes by...
"We observe that light travels at 186,000 miles a second, but given the vast size of the observable universe, that's a snail's pace. But from the point of view of a particle of light, time doesn't even exist."
"Time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and theoretically stops completely when you reach the speed of light."
Years Gone By...
"MLK Jr. and Anne Frank were born in the same year."
"Betty White was born in 1922. Automatically pre-sliced packaged bread loaves became commercially available in 1928. Betty White is six years older than sliced bread."
Long Live the Queen!
queen elizabeth images GIFGiphy"The queen and Marilyn Monroe would've been the same age."
"And Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith were born on the same day!"
- osme1
I swear Liz is going to outlive dirt. Wait, I believe she already has. Well she won't be alone, she'll have Betty White. At least she better have Betty. Time is nothing without Queen Betty.
TV Time
Season 2 Omg GIF by Paramount+Giphy"Happy Days was a TV show made in the 1970s-80s about teenagers in the 1950s. Similarly, That 70s Show was made in the 90s-00s about teenagers in the 70s. If a similar show were to be made today, it would be about teenagers in the 2000s."
- VVillyD
A Croc
"If a T-Rex imagined a creature as ancient as the T-Rex is to us, it would be a Stegosaurus. If that Stegosaurus imagined a creature as ancient as the Stegosaurus is to us, it would be a Crocodile. If that Crocodile imagined a creature as ancient as that Crocodile is to us, it would be a Shark."
On the Clock
"On a twenty four hour clock the amount of time that humans have been on the earth would total around five seconds."
"How about this one: If Homo Habilus first appeared at midnight, 24 hours ago, that means the first Homo Sapiens appeared at 9:25 PM, or about 2 and a half hours ago. The first human civilization, in lower Mesopotamia, appeared at 11:57 PM, or about 3 minutes ago."
"The Western Roman Empire fell at 11:59 PM, or 1 minute ago. Everything that has happened since - the Crusades, the Plague, the discovery of the New World, the world wars, all of it - has happened in the last minute of human existence."
And that's just OUR Sun...
"The span of our lives are so insignificantly small that our Sun will last another 5 billion years. That's 9 zeros people. Our eldest live to around 100 in the best places. That's 50,000,000 (50 million) times longer than any person can reasonably expect to live. And that's just OUR Sun. The universe as a whole has probably existed for magnitudes longer than that already and will continue to exist until the end of time as we know it."
Tell Me a Story
william shakespeare GIF by will herringGiphy"We know what a good storyteller Shakespeare was but there were Greek playwrights who wrote shows nearly 2,000 years earlier that are pretty good, too."
I hate time. Only because I'm petty and irritated of the amount I squandered. That's neither here nor there though. Time marches on and continues to amaze. I'll keep watching.
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