And did you ever get over it?

I generally get over it by the next week, as long as someone takes me out to dinner or something.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

Answers

My sixteenth. My family spent the weekend helping my supremely ungrateful brother move from the University of Chicago down to the U of Illinois Champagne/Urbana, possibly the most boring drive in all the U.S. I spent the trip sitting on his stinking rug rolled up on the back seat (he had been living in the basement of a frat house; feel free to fully imagine my sensory experience, if you dare).

I still hadn't been kissed.

I did, however, find a quarter on the ground at a gas station. The date on it was my birth year, 1966.

Obviously I didn't get over it, because the memory popped into my head the second you asked the question.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

It was last summer, my 38th. (Beth, 30 does not suck. 30 is great. I wish I was 30. Really. Don't you know that 40 is the new 30?)Anyways, my honey and I drove up to Laguna Beach for the annual "Pageant Of The Masters." It was the friggin' hottest Saturday of the whole damn summer and our "charming bed & breakfast suite" was this dingy, depressing, garage-sale like musty little room with no AIR CONDITIONING and - get this - it faced *&^%#@ Pacific Coast Highway which is, I swear, the busiest highway in the nation. Because of the incessant heat we had to keep the windows open and listen to every Harley and Honda ever manufactured whiz on by.

I was starving and my honey "forgot" to make dinner reservations so we ended up scarfing down the B & B's cheap crappy "Happy Hour" food and even cheaper and crappier wine. By this time I had a headache from the traffic and vinegar and then we had even MORE traffic and assholes to deal with at the Pageant site.

After the show (which was great, by the way) we got into a fight because I was starving and my honey, who was TIRED, just wanted to go back to the musty 'ol B & B to SLEEP. No birthday sex, just SLEEP. What a jerk. By this time it was almost midnight and all I wanted was a birthday dinner, for christ's sake. Did I mention that I received no presents? Nothing. Nada. Not even a cheap Carlton grocery store card.

So we ended up at this great little place where honey lightened up just a little. I ended up mostly conversing (flirting) with our cute twenty-something waiter who gave us a yummy free dessert in honor of my birthday. We went back to our hot shitty room where my honey promptly fell asleep and I stayed up all night (annoyed by the traffic noise) watching a strange Steve Buscemi movie on the "Independent Film Channel."

No birthday sex, no presents, not even a goodnight kiss. Sheesh. I hope this one is better. Turning 39 is just going to depress me.

Happy, happy birthday, beautiful Beth, beautiul girl. - Laura

Oh, I almost forgot. The wonderful city of Laguna Beach ticketed us because we backed into a parking space and parked our car facing out. Apparently this is not allowed. Now how anal is that? Ended up costing us $37.00. Happy Birthday.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

This last one...my parents forgot it was my birthday, nothing new, and my family just kinda skipped it, assuming I wanted to also. I didn't! Since my birthday is at the end of the holiday season it has always sucked anyway as far as celebrations.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

My 21st birthday fell on Yom Kippur. (For those of you not familiar, it's a Jewish holiday in which you spend the day fasting and atoning for the wrongs you had committed during the previous year. Kind of like a big yearly Catholic confessional.) There's nothing like spending what's supposed to be your biggest, baddest birthday ever wrapped in a comforter with a headache, dry mouth and the shivers, and then having to sit through two hours of services, finally breaking the fast at about eight PM with a bowl of soup and half a sandwich. Knowing me, I probably wouldn't have gone too wild anyway, but getting my free drink at the local bar would have been nice. By that time, I was too tired and cranky to do anything besides open a few presents and get a kiss from my boyfriend.

The other fun part about that birthday was my reading assignment due the next day for my Women in Chinese Lit and Film class. It was about a woman and her boyfriend who found themselves poor and starving after the Cultural Revolution. She spends a lot of time describing the steamed buns and wreaths of black bread that she cannot afford. This is not fun reading at any point, but fasting doesn't make it easier. In class the next day, everyone was saying things like, "That book made me so hungry! After reading it, I just went to the dining hall and ate like a pig!" Lucky you.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

It was my 22nd birthday. I had the worst case of flu I have ever had in my life. I spent the entire day crawling between my bed and the bathroom. At one point, I spent about 20 minutes laying on the floor in the hallway because I knew I would puke if I moved even one tiny muscle.

That evening, dehydrated and sore, all I wanted to do was lay in bed and sleep. Peter, though, didn't want my birthday to be ruined. He tried to cheer me up by bringing in a cake and half a dozen of our friends. Boy, was *that* not his best idea ever. I couldn't stomach any cake and spent the whole time trying to hide my rumpled, stinky self as far under the covers as possible without being completely rude to the kind souls who were risking infection to wish me well.

Maybe it's ungrateful of me, but I was very, very, very happy when they finally wandered downstairs.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

Oh, my 21st birthday was horrible. I'd just broken up with my boyfriend of almost 4 years the week before, and that day, I learned that he'd MOVED IN with an 18-year-old woman who I'd suspected him of being interested in while we were dating (he'd denied it.)

I'd planned to go out with a bunch of people that night, but there ended up being a huge blizzard (this was in Chicago in April), and everybody backed out except a few close friends.

We ended up going out dancing, but because of the blizzard it was really dead. However, the place wasn't TOTALLY empty...there was one very attractive woman there dancing on a platform with only some sort of bra-like top on, so of course, all of my guy friends spent the entire evening ogling her and ignoring me, and I had a horrible time. I wanted to go home and slit my wrists.

Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday, Beth!

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

At the risk of sounding like a whiny baby, here goes: I was in a new city with only a few friends besides my boyfriend whom I had moved to be with (bad idea, I know) and my friends stood me up, my boyfriend had to work 2nd shift that night so I didn't see him at all, and I couldn't even get in touch with my sister to talk to her and share my misery. I ended up going to the grocery store, buying a TV dinner and a cupcake and singing happy birthday to myself. How pathetic. That was last year, but the year before might have sucked even more. Or been the best birthday ever, depending on how you look at it. That was the day I signed divorce papers.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

I spent the whole day home alone and no one called me not even my mother (to be fair we did speak early in the morning) then I had to go to work that night I worked graveyard shift and on my way to work I got mugged so I was late getting into work, and when I finally got in there the guy I was relieveing started screaming at me for being late without even listening to my excuse so I spent pretty much the whole day in tears

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

I didn't mention this in my happy birthday reply, but my 30th birthday sucked really bad. It was my last birthday before I got a "real" job, and I was working in the Raley's bakery, scrubbing floors and baking bread. When I got home, my husband had done nothing at all, we went to friends house where I ate cold pizza. Sucked, sucked totally. It's been getting better since then, though.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

Definitely my 20th... I woke up with my period. It had been skipping months and stuff, so I wasn't expecting it and was a mess. And when it skips months, it also goes haywire with cramps. I had never had such horrible cramps! I was nauseous, couldn't stand up, and in a fetal position on my roommate's bed (which becomes the "sick" bed because you can watch tv easier!). Of course, since I was at school, my mommy wasn't there to comfort me and tell me to take 4 Advil instead of the usual two and since it was the weekend, my roommate wasn't home and since my ex-boyfriend was something of a poop, he didn't stop by all day to comfort me (although I did get presents that night when I felt better), so I was alone and in pain in a little dorm room for my 20th b-da

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

My 21st was really annoying, because since it's January 4, nobody ever wants to do much. And even though it was my 21st, everybody had other plans and didn't want to take me out to drink. Fine. Just fine. (pouting.)

There was one in my 30s that was really bad because my then-boyfriend and I were breaking up and he said he'd make reservations but then passive-aggressivly forgot to do so, or to round up the usual participants. So us and one other person ate out at a Chinese restaurant in our neighborhood. It was perfectly okay food, but not a BIRTHDAY DINNER.

Aside from that, I've been damned lucky.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

Oh, man, I forgot all about my 21st birthday. I was taking a last summer school class before law school. I was really mad about it because (1) I had taken a stupid science class that I thought was a GE but it wasn't, (2) and I had moved out of my apartment in LA, where all my friends were, to come to Northern California, where I hadn't seen anyone in ages so I didn't have any friends, plus (3) I was ruining my whole summer by having to take this class everyday from 8-12, which (4) made it really tough to have a job so I needed to take out more loans for my first year in law school, and (5) my 21st birthday was the day before the start of our two day, 8-hour final exam. And we had class that day.

But my dad decided that I should skip school that day, final exam or not, and he took me to an A's doubleheader. That part was fun, except that I had the stomach flu and I couldn't drink anything or enjoy the game or even keep down a hotdog. But I bought my dad a beer with my new legal status, and the vendor said, "My god, I thought you were 15."

When you're 21, you don't appreciate that sort of thing.

Anyway, my boyfriend was in LA and didn't come up for the big day because I had the final exam and all, but my mom had planned a nice dinner with cake and champagne. I came home, took one look at the champagne and balloons and whatnot, and went right into the bathroom to throw up.

I got a B on the final and I went to LA and partied the next weekend, so I don't really count that as a bad birthday for some reason.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

During my 26th birthday (and Thanksgiving, because my birthday is always either on T-day or a few days on either side), which was 1977, I had my jaw wired shut. Not fun.

And no, no one broke my jaw in a 'domestic dispute' or anything like that - it was wired shut because I'd had surgery on it to correct a defect, which was good, but the wiring shut for 6 weeks after and all the pain was not fun, especially not a birthday and T-day time, because I do love to eat!

Judy

http://www.judywatt.com

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

My worst birthday was my 27th. I was studying part-time and working full time, and I had to work all day and then do an exam in the evening (as far as I recall, it was something to do with taxation) from 7.00 to 9.00 pm. I was engaged and we were getting married two months later. My fiancee gave me a briefcase (how romantic!) and took me out to dinner. It was so late after my exam that nothing was open - it was a Monday night - and so we scratched around in a smoky pub trying to find food, ending up with a truly bad veal schnitzel and something pretending to be salad. I rang my sister and she told me not to worry about the briefcase, her boyfriend had bought her a wheelbarrow for her last birthday.

I got over it though. Truly. I did. It was nearly 10 years ago, so if it still made me itchy with annoyance I'd be a sick puppy, wouldn't I?

(Happy birthday anyway, Beth, my 30'th was one of my best so maybe I stole all the good 30th-birthday-vibes around).

-- Anonymous, July 19, 1999

My 10th.

My best friend Andrea and I had birthdays that were only 14 days apart, so we decided to throw a huge party for the whole 4th grade class at my house.

We were living in Belgium at the time and we had an ENORMOUS house with a sunken dining room that my parents used to entertain business guests.

Andrea and I thought it would be the perfect place to have a dance in. So we asked all of our mutual parentage if we could have what's called a "boum" which is essentially a large dance party. This would be our first "grown-up" kind of gathering, since up until now, parties had revolved around playing games like scavenger hunt or Marco Polo in the pool.

My mom said it would be okay for us to have the party, but that we could only have the whole crew there until ten pm or so, and then we could have a few special friends stay for a sleep-over if we wanted to.

Andrea and I were both a little bit disappointed that she was drawing the line so early, but weren't all that worked up about it either. This was, after all, our 10th birthday.

So everything was going along just fine, Mom had put in an order for the cake and she had a menu all picked out for dinner and Andrea and I were going to be making the invitations by hand.

Now of course, with a party of that size in the works, rumor got around about it pretty darn quickly. In fact most of the class already knew about it before we even handed out the invitations.

The night that Andrea came over to help me make the invitations with me, she told me that the rest of the kids in the class didn't want to go home so early and that we should try to talk my mom into making the party later before we wrote the invitations out.

So downstairs we went, and put on our most wheedlesome faces. But mom and dad wouldn't budge.

Back upstairs we went and I started making my invitations while Andrea sulked. Finally she started making hers, and then I noticed that she was putting midnight on all of her invitations.

"What are you doing?" I asked her, confused. She gave me a withering look, "You don't understand, Jessica said that no one will come if it doesn't go until midnight."

Now, Jessica was what you might call the most "popular" girl in the class, though at the time, I didn't think of it that way -- I just thought of her as "powerful": everybody jumped when she said jump.

Andrea had been getting pretty tight with Jessica and her closest friends of late, in fact, she'd been neglecting me rather seriously and part of the reason why I agreed to have the party with her was that I wanted us to do something special with her again before we moved away.

But now an ugly truth had been made plain to me: Andrea was doing the party to gain brownie points with Jessica, not because she wanted to have a party with me. To add insult to injury, Jessica was instigating a boycott of the party, unless she got things her way.

Andrea devised the following nefarious plan -- my invitations, would stay with the earlier hour on them, since there was an outside chance that my mom would be looking at them before we handed them out the following day.

I'd bring a marker with me and we'd change the hour on the invitations, before we handed them out to everyone at the big sporting event that the entire school was going to the next day. On the day of the party, the kids would all tell their parents to come pick them up at midnight, and we'd get around my parents that way.

I went to bed that night with a heavy heart. On the one hand, I didn't want to lose my best friend. On the other, I didn't want to get in trouble with my parents. And then there was the whole business of losing favor with the rest of the class. Andrea made it sound as if no one would be my friend anymore if we didn't change the time.

The next morning, I showed the invitations to my mom and she smiled and tucked them into my lunch bag for safe-keeping. I forget why, but I managed to forget about the invitations until much later in the day. When I did remember them, I forgot all about the time, and started handing them out. About ten minutes later, Andrea came storming up to me with a small group of kids, and asked me why I'd handed out the ones with the earlier time.

I tried to explain, and then kids started handing their invitations back to me and telling me that they wouldn't come unless the party lasted until midnight.

I had to chase down some other kids who weren't a part of this "movement" to take the invites back and apologize saying that there was a problem with the invitations.

That night I sobbed the whole sordid story to my mother and she called the whole thing off. She told Andrea how disappointed she was with her and for a while, Andrea wasn't allowed to come over to our house.

We wound up having a quiet party with just a few friends, some of whom did not go to the same school.

There's nothing quite like being betrayed by your best friend and about 60 per cent of your 5th grade class on your birthday.

I never got over that birthday. To this day, it brings a bitter taste to my mouth and makes me want to slam my fist into the wall.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 1999

Erk, change that last 5th to 4th.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 1999