What is your favorite birthday memory?

When Susan gave me her “all”...

I can’t remember my birthday. Sorry.

This is a difficult question, because I have so often been disappointed by my birthday that I have come to fear and loathe it. In addition, I can never forget that each birthday brings me one year closer to my demise. I’m not fond of the thought of my demise, except for when I’m depressed, in which case I hope to prevent any further birthdays from being celebrated.

There are, however, three birthdays that I remember, so I guess they would be candidates for favorite, if there can be said to be a favorite. The first is also when I was five. My mother, for the only time in my life, invited the whole kindergarten class to attend. It was amazing and overwhelming, and I think my greatest concern was for the girl who had her birthday on the same day as mine.

The second birthday I can remember is when I was maybe 12 or so. I had developed this great, not politically incorrect, desire to taste whale meat. My parents searched everywhere, and finally found a restaurant in Boston that served the stuff. We had to drive two hours to get there. Even my grandparents came in the car. I don’t remember the meal, though. I just remember that people must have worked so hard to make it happen. I believe that was the only time I was treated that way by my parents.

The third time was when I turned 20. We were sitting in a chalet high up the side of a Swiss mountain. The chalet had a porch overlooking the valley. You could see for miles up the valley to our left, and down the valley to our right. Across the valley stood another mountain side. That night, there was a lightning storm. You could see the lightning striking the mountain sides across the valley, and down towards the lower end. This natural fireworks display went on for hours, and I stayed put on the porch to watch it all. I felt like nature was taking notice of this anniverasy of mine. I guess nature knows how to throw a celebration, even if noone else does.

That’s not fair. The real problem is I don’t like myself very much. Maybe if I could learn to like myself, I’d enjoy birthdays.

@ Asmonet – that is something. Untill now I have never even read anything like that.

Mine was my 17th. I am a twin and NEVER had my own birthday party or celebration. I had just finished working 8 hours on Sat. My brother had been invited to go sledding to a day party into the evening with a girl I had been crushing on and her friends and His girl friend and I couldn’t go. He didn’t have a job so I was that much more pissed about working.

I got in the door from working and my mom grabs the car keys and gives me the keys to the stick shift and says to put gas in it. It is snowing out and I had barely learned how to drive stick.

I get back and I just got to the second floor and my mom yelled to me to bring the laundry down. I asked if I could change first and she yelled she was on the phone and to just do it.

SO I took the laundry to the basement, opened the door and everyone yelled SURPRISE!

Everything was a set up to get me nice and angry. It was my first every Surprise party. AND my first party where everything was just for me. NOTHING was for my brother.

And he set it all up.

I grew up kind of poor so I didn’t have any blowout parties as a kid and certainly didn’t go to another country, but my favorite birthday memory would have to be my 12th BDAY when I had a camping party with about a dozen of my friends and my neighbor took us on a hay ride. That night I got my first “real” kiss while listening to GNRs November Rain. It was a pretty big day for me.

@asmonet: That sounds like an amazing BDAY, but don’t say that It can never be topped. You’re young and will hopefully have another one at least close to that one day.

@Bri, that must have been awesome. What a nice thing for your brother to do, on his own birthday no less!

I don’t remember which one it was, but sometime in my teens I had a girlfriend (!), and she gave me an extraordinarily sweet and thoughtful gift for my birthday. I haven’t seen her in forever, but I still have it. Mostly it was super nice to have a sweet and thoughtful girl caring about me.

Close second was 17, when my dad bought me a BMW. Wish I’d kept that as long…

@JoeyDesignsStuff – I never even thought of the fact that it was on his birthday. Seriously, he made it so much about me it didn’t register.

I got even last hear on his 39th. He almost peed himself for two reasons.
1. it was 27 years later so he didn’t suspect a thing
2. it was in july and our birthday is in Feb.

My family was just talking about birthdays – especially with the recent passing of my father. My 9th birthday, started to be a horrible birthday. My father was always home for my birthday. He traveled a lot, for work, and this year, he was late. My mother had made me a birthday cake, I wouldn’t eat any, until he returned. I didn’t want to open a single present, because he wasn’t home. (I was a daddy’s girl, can you tell?)

I was so upset, I fell asleep, at the table and refused to allow my mother to move me. I thought I was dreaming, I heard someone singing, it was my dad. He was home. His plane had been delayed, but came home and sang to me. When I woke up, I looked at the clocks and it was before midnight. We ate cake together, but I waited on my presents. Eating cake and ice cream at almost midnight, with my dad, was special enough. My mom took pictures and even my sister woke up.

I didn’t know until years later, he had moved the clocks back and it was really 1am. That’s ok, to me, he rewound time, just to be there on my birthday.

Birthdays were always special, in our house.

@Bri_L / @tennesseejac: I was fortunate enough to move to another country very young and experience life out there, Ecuador is an amazing country. :)

Thanks for your answers everyone, I’m really enjoying reading them. I hope more stop by.

For my fifthieth birthday, my husband arranged for my first ever surprise party at our favorite restaurant. About thirty friends and family( mostly friends from various parts of my life) came. It will always be among my favorite lifelong memories.

My 12th birthday was memorable as a day in which my birthday was actually celebrated! Usually, my aunt (with whom I lived) would throw her son the best party she could afford for his day. Also, he never wanted me to be part of the festivities, so when his pals showed up for ice cream and cake, I was sent to my room. The excuse I got for my day was since mine is near a major national holiday, it would just be hard to do and no one would be around for it. To be fair, it is hard to get people together for the exact day, so now I’ll throw myself a little something a week before.

But my 12th birthday, not only was the whole focus of the day to be on me, but it was by a church acquaintance of my aunt’s who figured I was getting the short end of the stick in my home a lot and did her bit to make up for it. She took me to Marriott’s Great America in Gurnee, Illinois (about 20 minutes north of Chicago). It’s a Six Flags now, but it was a relatively new amusement park then.

And the kicker was that I was to come with her, her husband and children without my aunt and cousin! Yay! The only mar on the day was that my aunt had a fit when the nice woman said, “You and your son can’t go,” and browbeat her friend into taking (and paying) for them both in order that I could go. I apologized to her out of my aunt’s earshot, but the lady took it in her stride, bless. I rode my first roller coaster that day, the highest, fastest one I could. I just made the height cut off. To this day, I love roller coasters and big amusement parks.

My 21st birthday. It was the first day we were all back on campus, but school hadn’t started yet. All my friends went to cheap Mexican food (at this really awesome place), then to Snakes on a Plane. After, I went to my best friend’s house, we realized I hadn’t made any boozy purchases, so we ran to the store and got there just in time, I bought some beer, and then we went home. We didn’t even have the beer for, like, a week.

It was awesome because all my friends were there, I remember it, and we did something really fun.

Either that birthday or this past one where my boyfriend went above and beyond to treat me like a princess including cleaning my kitchen after everyone went home.

@EmpressPixie: Holy crap, I went to Snakes on a Plane for another birthday too! Mine is August 21st, what’s yours?

@asmonet: August 24th and I went to school in VA.

All of my birthday’s kind of run together… and none of them stand out as particularly amazing, but my 17th is Monday, so I’ll get back to you and let you know how that one goes, lol ;)

@EmpressPixie: weird. :D

Happy Birthday Sloane! A little early but it works. :)

lol, thank you!!