Worst Birthday Ever
Here’s a little story about my 21st birthday (I’m now 24).
I was with this guy whom I’d been dating for almost 4 years at that point. We had a tradition of going to the beach on my birthday, and that year I had asked him if he’d fix the window seal on his car so that I could have my window down on the way to the beach.
I arrived at his house to find that he had not fixed the window seal. He stopped at Canadian Tire on the way to get the stuff to seal it, but in order for the seal to dry, my window had to stay up the entire way to the beach. We’re talking a one hour drive in 30 degree heat in a car with black interior and no air conditioning.
After the beach, he didn’t take me to dinner or get me a gift. I don’t think he even wished me a happy birthday.
I met up with my best friend and we met my boyfriend and his friends at a bar. On the way there it POURED rain and we ended up getting completely soaked, head to toe.
At the bar, nobody bought me a drink, including my boyfriend. I had only brought enough money with me for a few pints after which I tried to take money out but my bank card wasn’t working. I had to order water.
When we were leaving, my friend’s brother got in a fight so we had to leave quickly and everyone got split up. I kept telling my best friend that I needed a hot dog because I hadn’t eaten dinner, but she was distracted by what happened with her brother, forgot I was staying at her place and left me standing at the hotdog vendor. I realized I didn’t have any money and couldn’t buy food.
I decided to just go home instead, so I walked to one of my boyfriend’s friend’s cars. When I got there, they were like “Sorry Amy, there isn’t enough room for you” and everyone including my boyfriend got in the car and drove off.
I then had to walk for another 25 minutes to another friend’s car. He drove me home and bought me McDonalds. That Big Mac was the highlight of my day!
Well let me just say Happy Birthday Amy from South Carolina….How many people can say they get international birthday greetings…and hopefully that loser of an old boyfriend is out of your life forever. By the way love the Twitter updates…keep them coming
I hope you dumped that sorry b*stard. What kind of boyfriend doesn’t even buy you a drink on your birthday?
That son of a bitch! Well, I guess you can look back light heartedly on it now, knowing that you’re in a much better place.
Happy birthday, Amy! (it was yesterday right?)
Dan
Wow, what a loser! (not you, him).
Well… that’s bad, although my last birthday was pretty bad, too, what with the 4 day span surrounding it in which I buried my grandmother, had my cat put down, got evicted, and broke up with my girlfriend who had been having an affair with a so-called-friend of mine for 9 months.
Birthdays are just another day, and people are dicks.
Your boyfriend sounded like shit
I think Max wins the worst birthday contest. Thanks for all the well wishes, everyone!
Cooper.
this story seems all to familiar and blurry to me, dont know what party i was attached to in this story. its easy to put someone down on a website they will never see. wow amy i didnt think you were that self-centred. so, “jeff” fixed your window, before his own, took you to the beach, while we played road hockey, and because you have no material goods, he is an asshole? at least jeff faces his problems rather than running and blaming life on where you came from.
@Derrick:
Did you even bother reading the second half of the post. Here’s the cliff notes for you: They went to the bar, he didn’t even buy her a drink when she had no money left, she’s hungry and he didn’t bother taking her to dinner, and he LEFT HER AT THE BAR. Really? You’re going to attack her about it?
The guys an asshole.
I considered deleting this post, but I’m not going to.
Derrick was the one who said “Sorry Amy, there isn’t room for you.” Fair enough, there wasn’t and I was the one who was supposed to be at a friend’s house so he had no obligation of driving me anywhere. I just wished that my bf would have stayed with me then rather than hopping in and leaving me to figure things out for myself. Especially since I’m certain I was crying at that point.
In regards to being a material girl, I would have accepted the simple gesture of fixing his window as a gift; he had asked me a few weeks earlier and that’s what I said I wanted for my birthday. He was also a talented musician and it would have been nice if he sang me a song / played the guitar for me.
I guess the point of the post was to remind myself that even though this year’s birthday wasn’t exactly what I hoped it would be, things could always be worse!
In regards to “running and blaming life on where I came from”, I’ve done nothing of the sort. The relationship ended several years before I moved to England by choice – not to escape problems or history. I wish my ex-boyfriend all the best and it’s a shame it didn’t work out for us but c’est la vie.
The Iraq War broke out on my 15th!
Amy, I don’t expect you to publish this comment, and won’t be at all offended if it doesn’t appear, but do hope you take a moment to read it, as it contains the same advice I was given which changed my life, literally. In the nicest way, I thought this post was a little self-pitying, and I know because I spent much of my 20s feeling very sorry for myself (I lost my dad before I was a teenager, lost my home when my step dad gambled away our money, and much more), so I felt completely justified in wanting some sympathy from people around me, yet I moaned to someone who happened to have been seriously abused and they let rip. It took that event for me to put things in to context. Compare my bad fortune to that of other people in the world (those who get continually abused or are born in to war or famine for example) and even my issues pale in comparison. I spent so long concentrating on what I didn’t have, I ended up looking like a selfish brat. I did have a lot of things. You had a bad birthday, and you’re writing a public post – one can only assume for some kind of sympathetic response. You live in a beautiful place, appear to have a lovely house, great job and loving boyfriend. Many people would love to have what you have. Put your experiences in context, learn from them then move on never to look back. Enjoy what you have now. Every time you want to moan be your own harshest critic. It took me time, but it was time better spent than feeling sorry for myself, and it changed my life for the better. I hope this comment makes some sense and I wish you all the best. I look forward to some more positive posts from you in the future
Take care.
@anon – Thanks for the comment and fair points also, although to be honest they would have meant more coming from someone brave enough to publish a real name / url.
My purpose for writing the post wasn’t to moan and bash my ex (I really didn’t think he or any of his friends bothered to read my blog!), fish for sympathy or complain about my life.
Before writing the post, I had a conversation with a friend about our worst birthdays and I thought mine was a good length story that would make for an interesting read and perhaps encourage others to write about theirs as well. I see now that that was not the way it came across!
I don’t regret writing the post even though it may have put me in a bad light. My past experiences, good and bad, have moulded me into the person I am now.
I am extremely thankful and fortunate to live a happy life in good health with a nice place to live, great family, friends & bf, two cuddly cats and a stimulating job. I have worked hard to get to where I am and I certainly don’t take it for granted!
Okay, not sure why it would mean any more as you wouldn’t know me one-to-one, so I’d still essentially be just an anonymous person to you, but the main reason is that I choose never give out real details if posting personal info about my life on the web – easy enough to use a real looking name and email address but I didn’t want to do that as it would be misleading, so I made it very obvious I was being anon
The background you just gave would add a lot more context to the post! Without it the first question is “why drag this up now”?
My last comment sounded preachy (sorry, not intended), but it was a real life situation and I wasn’t bashing you. Actually I expected the comment to stay between you and I, not get posted, but I have no issues with it either way. Just wanted to give you perspective from someone who did spend too much time feeling sorry for themselves. If that doesn’t apply to you and I was mistaken then great, ignore my first comment
I think it came across as nothing but a good story. Bloggers pull up stories from their past and write about them in order to be interesting, especially when the present is especially boring. We gotta get our material from somewhere!
And I think most people would have understood that from the way it was posted, perhaps with the exception of the parties involved IN the story, who were probably too insulted to see it for what it was.
Great, interesting blog post … shame about the commenters.
i dont think ive ever had anything good happen on my birthdays ever.
i remember my parents excuse for not letting me have a birthday party was that they were too busy going back to school and my brothers was a week and a half earlier.