Rubbish Birthdays

[Beck]

I've just had one of these today so I could do with some cheering up in the form of other people's disappointment/misfortune etc. And because I think I can outdo everyone in terms of pure birthday shiteness - no gifts (probably my own bloody fault for not asking for anything), two cards, four texts/emails of acknowledgement overall (all relatives) and a day wasted by sitting around in my pants, eating Ferrero Rocher and watching Larry Sanders. Which is, admittedly, my idea of a good time, but I hear it's traditional to go out and drink and so on.

So...has anyone got any actually entertaining stories of birthday-related disappointment?

[quadraspazzed]

Me, a mate, fuck all money - so two whiskeys in the pub, then secretly pouring a bottle of Aftershock into the glasses for the rest of the night until falling home pissed and vomiting red shit into my toilet.

That was my 21st.

The year after, same mate and a couple of other guys, watching Charlie's Angels cos that was the only video in this guy's house.

My birthdays tend to be shite anyway, always have done. And to be honest, sitting around in my jocks watching Larry Sanders sounds pretty damn good.

Happy Birthday though!

[Paaaaul]

I arranged to go out with friend's on my 21st.
The night before I drank about 12 pints and half a bottle of whisky.
I spent most of my birthday being sick into a bin next to my bed, went out in the evening and drank 1 pint over 4 hours.

[Borboski]

That brings to mind my 21st, me auld mucker.

I too had said, not seriously to those around, "oh don't buy me any presents", and literally recieved nothing.  I couldn't believe my mum hadn't made any effort at all - I was living home after being at uni.

I didn't know what to do at that time and had got a job with the police in the city station in nottingham.  That night someone shit in their cell which I uncovered.  I didn't think it was fair to call the cleaners to clean it up, given I'd found it, and so cleaned up this lad's massive turd, and was so depressed - 3 years of uni for this.  I can remember sweeping out the cell now, and taking the massive shit (honestly, god knows how he did it) to drop into the metal public toilet round the corner and i) nearly throwing up, ii) nearly crying.

Still, that job was excellent experience, got me to the job I've just got, and I'm sure your shitty birthday will be just as good experience!!!  To be honest, I just couldn't believe that the bastards took "oh don't get me any presents" seriously, the cunts!

[ccbaxter]

My birthday is July 14, apparently some kind of national holiday in France - I really should go there, then, some day...
Instead, I've tended to make the most instead of the simultaneous Finchley Carnival - always the same time of year, every year, and which I assumed was put on in my honour until I finally reached the age of maturity and realisation of, ooh, 26...

The big Three-Oh is approaching ever more intimidatingly - I'm sure I'll have a depressing anecdote to add to this thread aroundabout then.

[Sam]

My 18th birthday was completely uneventful and unremarkable and my 21st was very unpleasant and depressing, for reasons I won't go into.

Most of my others birthdays weren't anything special. I don't really see the point in them to be honest and I'm always quite bemused by people who feel they must have a brillant birthday, throw a wild party etc.

As Jerry Seinfeld says in "The Visa":

Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and
how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better
self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not
to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are
to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing.

[mcbpete]

I find it difficult to maintain the balance between being subtle about my birthday and being an attention whore. I just don't know how to put across it being my birthday in advance to people at work without looking like a cunt. The only way that people found out it was my birthday was from someone was looking over my shoulder when my brother sent my an email a day after my birthday, and then they moaned that I should have told them before hand. But yeah, birthdays seem to get progressively more depressing.

[Charles Charlie Charles]

Fuck this for a game of soldiers. 42 today, sat round in my pants writing lesson plans for next week. 1 card, no emails, no phone calls. My mates have gone off on a sex tour of Bratislava, my new lady friend has had some minor surgery (so no sex for me.) And the next 'big' birthday I've got to look forward to?

My 50th.

Heh.

[Jemble Fred]

A very happy birthday!

Fact is, I don't see the point in celebrating birthdays beyond 18. A slight excuse to pamper yourself, skip work etc â€" but otherwise, it's just another day. Mine is three weeks away, and I'll be too busy to notice.

[SOTS]

Birthdays always depress me. There's very little to do when you're under 18 and don't have that many friends.

Every year I get a bit sad about how my birthday celebration was a bit shitter than everyone elses. My sweet sixteenth wasn't exactly memorable.

[clareQuilty]

What's this? Me, clareQuilty illustrating a point in a thread by linking to a clip of an american standup comedian?
what  a twat.


http://www.sendspace.com/file/y2qbut

Patton Oswalt, in case you're wondering.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I have to share my birthday with a friend who always insists we do something together, and then gets upset when people remember it's my birthday and not hers. Fun fun fun. I did have a really good run of birthdays from 18 to 25, but since then it's all been down hill. Last year I had about 7 people over for a barbeque, and a few left by about 9pm as they had to go home and look after their spawn, so about 4 of us sat in the living room quietly chatting. Hmmmm.

[quadraspazzed]

Many happy returns Charles.

On a side note, the best birthday I've had was in 2004 (24) when I went to the first year of Electric Picnic which was only a one day event back then. I got pissed on wine (buying three bottles of wine much more preferable to queuing for hours to for pints) and saw Grandmaster Flash and Jurassic 5. Spent most of the rest of the time in the tiny dance tent getting my freak on to a load of 'electro-clash' (Felix da Housecat, Chicks on Speed, Ladytron etc) style music. Fuckin' deadly!

[Charles Charlie Charles]

Thanks, Jemble and Quad. Things aren't as bleak as earlier. I'm off to the pictures to see Spiderman, then for pints. And my daughter (after a subtle text reminder) rang to wish me Happy B-day, as did my Mum - bless her sainted gash, as William Burroughs would have said. Probably.

[kidsick5000]

One of my most memorable involved an aborted night out thanks to..

A broken into car
A stolen car stereo
A confrontation with scallys
An eternity waiting for the police to come round/
expecting a brick through the window after previous confrontation.

That was a weird one.
If you want to celebrate Rule number one:
Unless you are, the really popular party guy/girl, gets into clubs with a smile etc or a celebrity do not
DO NOT say: 'Dont get me anything/ do anything special'
Nothing is all you'll get.
Nobody learns. Unless you really dont want the bother, dont mention it.

[weekender]

For my 16th birthday I purchased a bottle of whisky which I started drinking at 9am.  By lunchtime I was too drunk to make sense in any of my 6th form classes so I got sent home.  I fell asleep on the bus, and got woken up by the bus driver who'd let me have a bit of a kip during his break because he felt sorry for me.  I walked home, claimed I was tired and went to bed at 3pm.

[Suttonpubcrawl]

I had a pretty shit birthday last year. I was working at the time in a temporary job which lasted for two weeks, and on either side of those two weeks there was a couple of months of unemployment so it was a bit unfortunate that my birthday happened to fall within the short period of employment I did have. I'd arranged a low key night out dahn the pub, and had decided to cycle there. I stopped in at the hospital on the way to visit my mother who was recovering from an operation at the time. About three quarters of the way to the pub my bike broke down and I had no tools to repair it with, so I had to walk with it the rest of the way. I had an alright night but my bike breaking down and having to walk the rest of the way got me fairly stressed and it took a while to calm down and just forget about it. Then on the way back I had to take the tube with my bike. I fell asleep and missed my stop, then woke up and discovered that I'd missed the last train going back the other way. I realised I had no obvious way to get home with my bike broken, my mum (the only driver in our house other than me) in hospital unable to give me a lift, the tube shut and buses most likely unwilling to take my bike. I thought I'd start walking in the direction of home and see if I could get any buses to take me. After about 20 minutes on foot, I got to a bus stop and managed to convince a bus driver to stop and take me home, where I arrived very late in time to get about 5 hours of sleep before my next day at work.

[Cambrian Times]

My 19th was bad.

I got drunk on Alcopops and Kronenburg, went back to my room, ate a really sickly birthday cake whilst drinking this vile dessert wine I'd bougth from Safeway. Five minutes later I spewed the whole lot back up in the bogs and staggered down the corridor telling everyone that I'd just been sick.

[Lady Beaner]

This thread makes me want to cry.

[NoSleep]

I completely forgot my own birthday once, as had everyone else (otherwise, I would have been reminded). I only remembered shortly after midnight, and felt quite chuffed about it, for some reason.

[The Widow of Brid]

Due to a mix up, everyone thought I was out of the country the week of my eighteenth birthday and so didn't acknowledge it at all. No 'phone calls, no cards, no nothing.

I was very upset at the time, particularly as it was a rough period all 'round anyway,  but the 'phone calls a couple of days later asking what I was doing for my belated birthday celebration 'now I was back' were both a relief and extremely socially awkward as I'd spent most of the last two days cursing some of the people involved to an early death involving fire and insects.


My birthday last year was quite shit as well. We went to a local organic food fair thinking it would be a good place to recover from our severe hangovers, only for them to install a thrash metal band ten minutes after we got there.

[duckorange]

13th birthday

Arrived back from the hospital after my sister had knocked me out to find the guy next door had hung himself.

That was a pretty disappointing birthday.

Especially since my main present from my parents was "The Muppet Show Album" and the present from my grandparents got blown up by the IRA in a post office bombing in Belfast.

[23 Daves]

My 21st was absolute fucking rubbish if it's any consolation at all (mind you, it seems everyone's is).  

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me now and which may or may not have been my fault, I fell out with quite a few friends of mine shortly before my 21st.  In reality, I think it was one of those childish "gang" situations where one of them decides you're an arsehole, and encourages the rest to follow suit.  In this case, I had a slight fling with an ex of one of the friends in question, which did me no favours at all, even though he'd stopped seeing her about three years before.  There was some inter-band rivalry going on as well between my garage rock band and their slightly ropey twee indie act, which I don't remember encouraging at all but seemed to occur anyway.  Anyway, the upshot of all this tension was that all the fuckers boycotted my 21st, though they at least did tell me to my face that "frankly, we can't be bothered with it".  I suppose if they'd really hated me they'd have just left me sat by myself in a club somewhere waiting for them to turn up, so that's a bonus.

The result of this was that one of my other mates took pity on me and rounded up all his technical college friends to come down to a local curry house to get drunk and celebrate my birthday.  A really nice gesture, but to be honest being sat with a bunch of people I barely knew eating cheap, watery curry wasn't how I'd envisaged the night panning out.  It's not the night historic birthdays were made of.  To make matters worse, The Fatima Mansions (who were one of my favourite bands at the time) were doing a gig on the day of my 21st birthday in the town where I went to university, but I backed out of booking tickets to go and see them because I thought the time would have been better spent with all my friends.

I never did speak properly to those other mates of mine again.  Bah.