2. Drawing Party Lines
For my Sweet 16, my mom and I planned out this nightclub theme and had a party planner decorate a warehouse. They put up white curtains to white everything out, installed a disco ball, recruited a DJ with lights, and set up a lounge area that had tables with glowing centerpieces and all. I'd been having some family troubles so it was an amazing thing for my mom to do for me, and also a lot of money.
I passed out the invites at school to all of my friends and didn't invite the jock who had made a point of trying to make my life miserable. I had over 100 people say they were coming. On the day of the party, I got a flood of texts telling me that people "couldn't make it". The reason why stunned me.
The jock had planned a party of his own and invited everyone who was coming to my party. I ended up with about 30 people...20 of which didn't go to my school. Almost everyone I went to school with didn't show. My mom even called that kid and told him he could come if he wanted to, urging him not to do that to me on my 16th birthday.
I will never get over the humiliation from everyone at school the following Monday. I transferred schools after that. I will never forget that feeling.
3. Totally Left Out
When I graduated from high school, I wasn't invited to a single party. The big one for my graduating class was held at a local country club. There were over 200 people in attendance even though there were only 192 from my year. How do I know this you might ask?
I was there when everyone received their invites. I was watching the computer when the Facebook event creator, who was our class president, sent out the invites. The worst part?
I watched her uncheck my name, along with one or two other kids' names before sending it. I was also present when the paper invites were given out since the school gave permission to hand them out in homeroom. I was the only one in my h0meroom who wasn't given one.
4. Flaky Friends
For my high school's five-year anniversary, one student made a Facebook group and went through the yearbook, adding everyone he could possibly find. About 630 of the roughly 700 students from our graduating class joined the group and started conversations on how everyone was doing, where everyone was living, etc. For the actual in-person event, about 150 people said yes and 300 or so said maybe.
The guy who organized it rented out a private room at a bowling alley, paid for a bartender, and got a ridiculous amount of food and such. He also put together a DVD of random videos from sporting events, plays, funny skits from the school news, and all these good memories. This guy went all out. On the day of the reunion, it all went wrong.
Only five people showed up. The guests consisted of the guy who organized it, his girlfriend (who wasn't even in our class), myself, a friend of mine, one random person who I recognized but never spoke to, and another guy who actually worked at the bowling alley. It was quite possibly the saddest thing I'd ever seen. The look of defeat on the guy's face was crushing.
I've never felt such vicarious humiliation in my life. We ended up just getting tipsy and bowling a few games before the black cloud of shame left everyone silent. My friend and I left abruptly. Allen, if you read this, everyone in our class was a jerk anyway. Sorry, bro.
5. The Show Must Go On
I used to work in the showroom at Chuck E. Cheese when I was in high school. My primary job was to throw birthday parties and throw birthday parties I freaking DID. I made sure that every kid there had the greatest birthday party of all time. I worked the 4th of July one year and we had just one party that day.
The guest list for this party was fairly small, like five or so, but the actual attendance proved to be even smaller than that. It was just the father and son. The mom was absent, and relatives on her side of the family were proud residents of the state penitentiary in Oklahoma, so they couldn't make it either.
The dad got custody and moved with his son to Tennessee where they had his party. But it was the saddest looking party I ever saw. He invited a few friends but none came, so it was just father and son at the birthday table. They weren't very well off and they bought the barebones party option. At some point, I decided to throw in about $40 of my own money to make sure they had the best birthday bash ever.
At the hour mark from closing, there was still nobody else at their table, so all of the employees started partying with them. We made them 10 pizzas and the kid got to pick whatever toppings he wanted. We then gave him about 500 tokens. We played at the arcade and then put on a private show even after we closed the place.
After the show, my boss brought out an Xbox and the kid got to play video games on the giant TV in the showroom. It was close to midnight when they left. My boss brought fireworks and drinks, and all of us employees were gonna raise heck in the parking lot. We decided to invite the dad and his kid to our little gathering.
The kid got to shoot off bottle rockets and roman candles and whatnot while his dad drank with the other employees. Later, the dad brought the employees aside and started crying, saying thank you for the amazing party. I worked at Chuck E. Cheese for only two years and I hated most of it, but that night was one of the best nights of my entire life.
6. It Was...Good...
Just last night, I was forced to go watch a friend of a friend's band play at some dingy, hole-in-the-wall bar. They went on late after another band had already played, and the audience just kept dwindling in size. It was pretty excruciating, it took all my willpower not to look like I was in agony. Afterward, we all had to pretend they rocked out and that we were impressed.
I mean, he looked so happy, we couldn't ruin it for him.
7. A Bully's Karma
I have a friend—we'll call him Jed—who went to a high school leavers' party. This guy was given a bad roll of the dice when it came to certain genes: he was unusually short, plump, had glasses, wasn't great in the looks department, and had a bit of a geeky thing going on. But overall, he was a very likable guy; that is if you weren't shallow.
I've had many good times with him, even though side-by-side we look like the main characters in Twins. Anyway, Jed was invited to this leavers' party, hosted by this chick who was super hot, a star pupil. Basically, she was the real-life equivalent of a movie prom queen; stereotypically very shallow and witchy. We'll call her Kez.
At the party, Jed was getting on fine with the other guests, even though he wasn't close with many of them. One guy he was getting on particularly well with was the brother of the hostess. Anyway, long story short—at one point, Jed was going to get a drink or more snacks or something, and Kez spotted him.
In a move straight out of some cheap cheerleader movie, she made a disgusted face and said, "Oh...who invited HIM"?! loud enough for Jed and several others to hear. The feeling of embarrassment must have been sickening for him. Good thing for her that I wasn't there because I'd have told her where to shove those words and left with him, but he had no one backing him up.
It wrote off his night. He went back to the crowd alone and started to diplomatically say his farewells to the people he'd been talking to, reckoning the night wasn't going to get any better. Some of the people he was saying goodbye to were surprised he was leaving so early—they didn't know what had just happened. And one of the people who were especially curious was Kez's brother.
He saw that Jed looked a little upset and he asked him what was wrong, so Jed told him. The guy listened, looking over at his sister, who seemed to be looking back at him uncomfortably. The guy asked if Jez could stay while he sorted something out, but Jed said he needed to leave. The guy shook his hand, apologized profoundly on behalf of his sister, and told him that he would be missed.
Jed went into the hall and got his coat. He put on his shoes and opened the front door. He turned back to give a final wave to the people at the party and was treated to a shocking sight.
It was Kez, the hostile hostess, and her brother, standing in a corner. Kez's brother was clearly angry, staring, berating Kez with his finger right in her face. Kez was bright red with embarrassment, openly crying while her friends took their turns being frozen with sympathetic shame for the second time that night.
From what I know of the chick, it was long over-due.
8. Mom's Honor
My mother forced me to throw a 19th birthday party. I didn't want one. I like birthdays, but my mother sometimes thinks her children's birthdays are in HER honor for ever giving birth to us, so we BETTER be celebrating. She invited some of my "friends" over without telling me, including this guy I didn't like. I had to put up with him hitting on me all night.
The only highlight was that my sister made me a totally awesome cake that featured Goku fighting a vampire. But even that got ruined for me. Unfortunately, my best friend got really tipsy and spilled his drink all over it.
9. Playing Favorites
In Spanish culture, it's tradition to have a quinceanera. I didn't want to have one, but my mom INSISTED on having it either way. So she decided to have it in the house, right? But it's not very big in my house, and she already invited our family and close friends from out of state. My mom limited me to invite five friends, but she got to invite all the people she wanted. So, we were expecting around 40+ people to show up.
On the day of the party, only six people came: two of my friends and four family members who lived in the city. In terms of presents, I only received one card with $5 bucks and some cheap perfume. I was in a super poofy dress for hours and heels that were hurting me while everyone was just in semi-casual attire. Oh, but it gets worse.
On top of it all, it was raining...but what bites the most was the following year when we did it for my sister. She invited the same people, but she decided to have it in a rented space. She spent almost six times the money on it and even got a DJ. Almost everyone came and there were about 105 people invited. The same people from the year before who never came to my party came to my sister's.
Everyone was all fancy and it was super organized, not a complete mess like mine was. Her presents? Expensive make-up, good perfume, around $600+ cash in cards, and some shoes and clothes. Needless to say, after that event, I felt like garbage. That's when I realized there was definitely a favorite in the family.
10. Four-Eyed Freak
In fourth grade, I switched from homeschooling to public school for the first time. My glasses were 3/4" thick, I had a high school reading level, and I was going through a phase where my favorite game was to pretend I was a horse. I'm sure you can extrapolate from there. After endless teasing from my classmates, I came out of that year with a facial tick and an anxiety-related speech impediment.
Kids suck.
11. Double The Trouble
I'm the eldest son of five kids. I have three younger brothers and a sister. One brother is two years younger. My sister is five years younger. My other two brothers are twins, both born on Friday the 13th, and they are seven years younger than me. The twins are the ones who like to make me miserable. My parents raised me fairly well, but somehow, they've failed at raising these two demon children.
They fight with everyone about everything. Bruises are not uncommon, especially when the two of them fight each other. For some reason, they developed a love of teasing me. Being an adolescent teenager with a slight bit of 'emo' thrown in was honestly a perfect target for them.
Any chance they got, they'd barge into my room unannounced and do something stupid. For example, they'd giggle for no reason while staring at me, make some snide remarks about my appearance, and flash me while I'm playing Halo, just to name a few. For a good five years of this, my parents believed I had anger issues. I told them that it was the twins, but they wouldn't have it.
They brought me to a psychiatrist, but that didn't help. They also sent me off to a "recreational camp" in the Arizona desert. At least that one was actually enjoyable. I came back really calm, and nothing upset me for about a week. The anger was gone. Twins, however, had been scheming during the five weeks I was away. Great. Needless to say, it again got to that point.
They teased me to the point of where I wanted to end them, and I NEARLY went through with it. I'd somehow gotten my hands on a large blade and I waved it at the younger of the twins. You wanna know what the worst part is? That demon child was LAUGHING the entire time. He was about to lose his eye and he was laughing.
The only thing that kept me from tearing his eyes out of his sockets was my sister biting me until I bled. Anyway. There were plenty of times when they drove me to rage. I'm finally moved out now, and in the army. Life is awesome. And it's so quiet. So very quiet.
12. No Problem, Dad
This was also like seven years ago, and I was 11 or 12 at the time. On New Year's Eve at around 10 pm, my father had set up a little barbecue in the garage. It had everything a BBQ needed; meat, drinks, soda for the kids, and even a TV set. His car's trunk was also set up with speakers playing some samba music. My father, who was sitting in a plastic chair, was eager for the barbecue that was coming.
Fast forward to an hour later—everyone was upstairs watching TV or something, and my friends called me at the door. I headed down through the garage and I saw my father still sitting in the plastic chair. I looked at his face and I could tell his eyes were a little reddish, with a teardrop or two running down his cheeks. That's when it finally hit me. He had set up the barbecue more than an hour ago and no one showed up.
I knew I had to do something, so I told my friends to come to the backyard and we ate the BBQ my father had cooked together. Then, I went upstairs and told my family to join us too. Two minutes later, my friend's father (who was also one of our neighbors) popped up at the door and joined us. I've never seen my dad so happy.
13. Third Time's A Charm
I was forced to go to my cousin's wedding. You might be thinking, it's my cousin's wedding—I should be expected to go, right? Well, this was his third marriage. The first one ended in divorce after two months. Only five people showed up and I was hosting. His parents ditched the event because the girl he married was Mexican, and they didn't approve.
In his second marriage, the wife (Indian this time) walked out on my cousin right before the final ceremony. He attempted to end himself right there with the cake-cutter. The third marriage wasn't any better, either. I was the host again because no one else wanted to do it. Actually, no one else even wanted to show up, but it was for my cousin, and I love him, so I did it.
As I expected, his parents ditched again because he was marrying outside their race and religion (another Mexican, Catholic). Six people total showed up, including my cousin and his wife. So there I was, singing, dancing, and telling jokes to a total of six people, two of which weren't even invited. Just some random wedding crashers that we decided to just keep around for company.
It's been a year-and-a-half now, and my cousin is currently living in Mexico with his third wife.
14. Surprise, Surprise
A few years ago, some friends of mine decided to throw me a surprise birthday party. I caught wind of it in advance but played it cool. When I arrived, I didn't see any cars but paid no mind since it was supposed to be a surprise, right? Wrong. Three people came later and the original planners weren't among them.
15. That's A Stalemate
I was trying to start a chess club where I got over 50 people to go to our first meeting. We got a teacher and a counselor to chaperone because it was required. After school, I went to the classroom...and only one other person was there besides the teacher that let us use her classroom. When the counselor came in and asked where everybody was, I was so embarrassed that I just told her, "Oh, it was canceled".
16. A Cold Housewarming
I had a housewarming party at my first apartment my freshman year of college, out of state. I had a small circle of friends, but about 30 people said they would come. One friend even said she'd help me set up. But no one came. Not even the friend who said she'd help set up. It was sad. That whole year was actually sad.
I spent my 18th birthday alone eating Indian food after three different friends (each with different plans) all canceled on me. Yeah...
17. Read All About It!
When I was still in high school, a good family friend of mine decided to throw a Sweet 16. Well, my brother was invited since we have known the family for years and he was quite popular. When my brother arrived at the party, no one was there. It was a complete disaster.
Turns out, a more popular girl threw her own party on the same day and everyone went to that instead, including her boyfriend at the time. The girl was devastated. My brother, being the awesome person that he is, decided to put everyone on blast in the high school paper. I wish I could find it but it's lost to time. He called everyone out. Super proud of my brother for that.
18. Intimate Affair
I can't remember the year, but it was in the early 2000s I think. My family and best mate spent a week organizing an NYE party at home. They cleaned the yard (which took two days) sorted out materials for the fire pits, put up massive tarps, and rented out heavy-duty heaters. A couple of my other friends helped out and thought it would be a good idea to make up random flyers for this party and put them up around town.
We started freaking out a bit, so we got our hands on some extra chairs and long tables. My mom ended up forking out a bit of money for junk food and she cooked up some nibbles here and there. NYE came around and we were running around setting up everything up, making sure things were secured and the house was ready for the onslaught of hundreds of people. And then the other shoe dropped.
When night came, a few of my best mates turned up, a few of my mom's friends turned up, and the hours passed. The fire pits were going, there were bowls of food all over the place, and the music was on...but it was only five of us sitting around, drinking with confused looks on our faces. No one else ever showed, but eventually, it didn't worry me or anyone else.
We had a great time, as you do getting tipsy with mates. To this day, I would rather have a gathering of my friends than have a bunch of strangers tearing the place up.
19. High Standards
My parents moved us around a lot, so I wasn't able to keep friends for a long time. I moved to a new school and decided that the best way to make friends would be to invite a whole bunch of girls to my birthday party.
My mom put the whole thing together and only two girls showed up. I was devastated. I asked one of the girls from school why they didn't come and she said, "My mom told me it looked like a child made the invitation, so I couldn't go". I WAS A CHILD. Needless to say, I wasn't very socially graceful after that.
Public Domain Pictures
20. Inner Struggle
In England, we have this thing called sixth form. It's basically college, but you stay at your high school for an extra two years and work there for some qualifications. Anyway, I was in sixth form twice. I failed the first year, so restarted but I ended up failing that too. I was taking music production at the time and my school's facilities for this couldn't even match that of a home studio.
The class I was enrolled in got next to no funding, the teacher had never taught production, and the studio gear was outdated and barely working, let alone the awful cheap drums they provided for us to record with. My friends were in the class with me so I stuck around, doing the bare minimum. I taught myself more at home, just experimenting with my home studio.
When we did get a recording assignment, it was a lot of fun spending studio time with my friends. I actually skipped mandatory classes to help my friends out with their assignments. Besides, it's not easy recording all by yourself, especially if you're alone since there's a lot of running back and forth involved.
There was this girl who was also in sixth form who I had a crush on. I got really depressed about it because I always felt she liked me back, but she already had a boyfriend. Still, she would often signal me to make a move and throw hints that she wanted me to. Anyway, when I wasn't in the studio, I spent basically the rest of the time lounging in the student area away from all the younger kids.
Because we weren't given back-to-back lessons, we had a lot of free periods to do work on whatever we wanted. As I never went to any of my classes aside from production, I never had any work to do, so I'd lounge around or hang out with the girl. I started to like her more and more, and her signals made me feel more comfortable around her.
I was a chubby fella back then. I wanted to lose weight, but it wasn't exactly crippling my life or getting me down. All in all, I was pretty happy. One day, I was lounging around with her and a couple of my friends, and I can't remember how the conversation went exactly, but I brought up a time when she told me she left her boyfriend for me in a dream. Her response broke my heart.
She said, "I would never leave my boyfriend for you. Look at you. You're disgusting". One of my amazing friends called her a jerk and told her to shut up. That's when my depression started. I particularly started gaining more weight, and when I was at my biggest, I was 286 pounds. A few people started joking around saying I was a "lazybones". It was nice at first, not at all malicious, but eventually, it got harsh.
I was already not going to my classes, but when I got more and more depressed, I stopped showing up to school; just coming in two or three times a week. At one point, I got called into the principal's office, and we had a talk about why my performance and attendance were down. I don't know how many of you have suffered depression before and can vouch for this, but when I was depressed, the last thing I wanted to admit was that I was depressed.
My best response to his questions about why I was failing was "I don't know". He said I was getting lazy and that I needed to get working or I could get kicked out of sixth form. There was one guy in my year who I used to be really good friends with. He was a smart guy; a really good student who aced all his classes. Well, at some point, he came out as gay and instantly became every girl's best friend, despite them hating him beforehand.
He started calling me lazy every time he could, and it wasn't an "Oh, you lazybones," it was malicious: "I'm better than you, you're lazy". Now "lazy" doesn't seem like an insulting thing to hear, but when you're too lethargic to even want to do school work, "lazy" gives off the wrong vibe to others. Soon, other people started to think it was okay to have a dig at me and tell me outright that I was lazy and failing school.
The worst part is that my buds don't care. I feel like they can tell I'm going through some rough stuff, but they don't really do anything to. help me. Fast forward to about three-quarters of the way through the school year—the school decides to do its first-ever sixth form yearbook. I was not really fussed about it until I noticed they handed out a survey to fill in.
I was reading the survey and it had the standard nominations: "Most likely to succeed", "Best haircut", etc. All that novelty stuff. I wasn't really filling them in since I didn't know enough people to nominate. But as I got to the second page, lo and behold, the nomination was there: "Laziest student". Instantly, I knew everyone was writing my name down. It was like a sick joke.
My friends acknowledged it, a little awkwardly I might add, but they were kind enough to not put me down for the entry. Though, I could tell they knew I was going to win it anyway. The principal came in and said, "I hope everyone's filled out their surveys. There's a lot of sure-fire contenders out there"! Then he looked directly at me. Cue the snickers.
I left school before they gave out the yearbooks. They had a little assembly where they gave out small trophies to the winners and I skipped that too. They actually thought I was going to show up and stand up in front of them to take their nonsense. On the day of the assembly, a guy in my class informed me that I did indeed win. Everyone had a good laugh about me not being there.
If just for five minutes they took the time to actually talk to me, they would've picked up that I was having a hard time.
21. Worst Birthday Ever
On my ninth birthday, I invited my entire grade. My mom, my little sister, and I had spent a week making a piñata by hand. We were living in extreme poverty and I didn't have a lot to eat sometimes, but my mom had saved up to have snacks and such, and I remember that she put so much work into making it a great party.
I knew my best friend had some kind of family event that weekend, so she couldn't come, so we had plans to have a sleepover the next weekend. We sat in the yard waiting for two hours and no one showed up. My little sister and I ended up just taking turns hitting the piñata ourselves. I wanted to cry, but my mom already looked so sad, I felt too guilty to let the tears come.
Worst birthday ever.
22. Party Improv
This sort of thing happened to an acquaintance of mine. This kid was really nerdy, but he didn't have any self-awareness, so he never made any friends. He organized a big going away party in our senior year. A friend and I knew what was going to happen, so out of pity, we decide to go. Big surprise, no one else was there. Just a big empty house with bowls of chips all set up, and the guy sobbing in the corner.
We just stood there awkwardly for a few minutes. It was miserable, and we knew we had to change the mood. So we ran back home, grabbed our laptops, ran back, and had an impromptu Lan party. We actually had a blast, and the host had a great time. The "party" ended up lasting about 24 hours.
23. Textbook Loyalty
I organized a huge surprise party to celebrate my best childhood friend, Jake, moving back to our hometown during our junior year of high school. It's kind of funny because I lived in a small town and everyone was always really close, but at the beginning of our junior year, things started getting cliquey. Also, that was around the time when some of the "cooler" kids started drinking.
Having kind of been a late bloomer in the drinking department, I simply didn't think of including drinks at my party. It was going to be a nighttime pool party at my place (depending on when his flight got in), and about 60 to 70 people had said they were for sure coming. I bought a bunch of drinks, a bunch of pizzas, and even some cool pool toys, all from the money I'd made working for my grandpa over the summer.
I did a ton of chores for weeks around the house to convince my parents to allow me to have the party. I thought it was going to be so cool for Jake to come back and see all these people who he had spent the better part of his childhood with. When the time came, our other best friend left to pick him up from the airport, and people were supposed to start showing up at around 7 pm or so.
7 pm came and went, and my heart began to sink. No one showed. So did 7:30 pm, then 8 pm, then 9 pm. No one was answering their phones, no one was texting me, and even my other "best friend" who went to pick up Jake wasn't answering. 10:15 pm rolled around and I was just crushed.
I started putting the pizza into Ziplock bags and deflating the pool toys when I heard a knock on my door. It was Jake standing at my door covered in dirt and sweat. I asked him where everyone else was, and he told me the crazy story. He got picked up at the airport and was taken to this huge house party that one of the "cool" kids were having at his place.
His parents had just gone out of town, so he threw this spur-of-the-moment party that snowballed into a rager. They arrived and Jake realized I was not there, so he asked our other best friend where I was.
He told him I couldn't make it, so Jake asked him to call me and try to convince me to come (his phone died on the flight). Our other best friend kept saying no. Fed up, Jake just told him to tell the truth, and he did. Basically, everyone had originally intended to go to my party, but when they heard about the rager, no one wanted to miss it.
Subsequently, no one wanted to be the person to call me and tell me that everyone was ditching my party to go to another one. After learning the truth, Jake said wanted to go to my place, but everyone he knew there was too tipsy to give him a ride. So he walked. He walked three miles at night, through fields and woods, to my place.
We said screw everyone else and drank soda, ate pizza, swam in the pool, looked at the stars, and fell asleep playing N64. It was great. Just two old friends who hadn't seen each other in a long time doing stuff we did when they were kids. Did I forget what happened? No. Did I forgive all my friends?
Yeah, I'm not going to hold something as stupid as that over their heads, especially when most of them have been there for me most of my life. And frankly, I don't really care. That night was one of the best memories I have of Jake, and I'm glad it happened.
24. He Really Sees Me
I was finishing my freshman year of high school in a small New Hampshire town. I was the secretary in the student council (by default, as nobody ran against me) and I decided that I wanted to run for sophomore Class President the next year. The speeches and voting would be held at the end of freshman year to decide who would hold what positions in tenth grade.
I spent a lot of time on my campaign. I made posters with catchy mottos, wrote and rewrote my speech multiple times, and my friends told me that they would indeed vote for me. So there I was, stepping up to the stage to give the speech to the whole freshman class. I was peppy and full of young, naive energy as I delivered my big speech. When I finished, I said "Thank you," indicating my speech was over.
Nobody clapped. It was completely silent in the auditorium. After an awkward silence, the guy I was running against clapped for me. He was a sweet, nerdy kid who I was confident had nothing to do with the setup. I left the stage and cried in the bathroom for an hour. I did not win. I moved that summer to a big city, and my life became infinitely better. Still, kids are mean.
But I will never forget the kind gesture of Nick Clark clapping for me when nobody else would. He holds a special place in my heart.
25. A Miserable Milestone
I work at a bar that holds many birthday parties and I have had quite a few instances of this happening. One of the more memorable parties was this one girl's 18th.
She was pretty hot and she turned up at the start of the party on her own to set up. Two hours later and still no one had shown up, so she started to ring people to see where they were. No one was answering their phones. But that wasn't the saddest part.
What really gets me is that not even her family showed up, I mean, where the heck were her parents? So in the end, my boss and I just did shots with her, and then she just sat in the corner of the bar crying for a few hours until we decided to shut the party down. We all went home feeling rather miserable.
26. New Best Friend
On my 12th birthday, I told my parents that I would pay for my whole party, and I did. It was super awesome!...well, it would have been if anyone else but my best friend and brother showed up. There we were, just the three of us, at a private laser tag room stuffing our faces with party food when my mom called my other friend's mom.
The kid picked up and just started laughing. I cried in the toilets but my parents cheered me up afterward. They took me to the pound and told me to pick a puppy to take home!
27. The Cursed Child
Right after my dad passed, all of the kids in my second-grade class stopped talking to me. We used to have our desks pushed together in clusters of four and suddenly I was being moved from cluster to cluster. I was finally grouped with the kids no one liked.
One kid wore diapers and was always messing himself, the other kid constantly exposed himself, and the last kid would pick his nose and rub snot off on kids. Even they didn't want me.
I remember when the snot kid found out I was moving to their cluster—he started screaming at the teacher that he didn't want to catch my curse and have his father pass too. So from that day until the last day of fifth grade, I had to sit alone, off to the side near the teacher's desk. The only time kids ever spoke to me was when they were dared to.
28. Two's A Party
When I was in the fifth grade, a kid in my class had some sort of disease that made him walk and talk funny. I'm not really sure what it was, but that's not important. He was much shorter than the rest of the class, but everyone loved him because he was hilarious and really a sweet kid. Anyway, I came home one weekend and there was a message on my answering machine; it was him inviting me to his sleepover party.
He'd invited a lot of the class and said that most of them were supposedly going to come. I got there and I was the only one that showed up. One girl came for like 15 minutes just to be nice, but I stayed the whole night with the guy and had a blast. He lived with his dad and older brother and I could tell that they were happy at least someone came.
Definitely glad I accepted his invitation.
29. Out Of the Loop
My friend had his birthday party yesterday. The plan, for weeks, was to go to a giant shopping mall for dinner, drinks, and general fun. About 20 people had been invited. Well, I showed up at the appointed time and no one was there, not even the host! I called him to ask what was going on—and his response made my blood boil.
He told me that he changed his mind at the last minute. Now everyone was going to just meet up at his place (on the opposite side of the city, an hour's drive). So I ask him if he needed me to help him call people to tell them about the change, and he said, "Nah, everyone is already here". So I said, "Guess I'll just go home then. Happy birthday".
30. A Silver Lining
When I was in primary school, this guy invited everyone in our class to his birthday. I didn't know him very well, so asked everyone else if they were going and they said that they were. On the day of the party, it was only him, his cousin, and his parents. No one else showed up at all. But it was their loss because there was a ton of pizza and an endless supply of junk food.
The guy who threw the party became my best friend and still is 16 years later.
31. In The Nick Of Time
A friend of mine from high school invited about a hundred people to her birthday party, but just me and two others showed up. The next year, when I was at college, she was still in high school and she attempted to take her life. She called me to say goodbye, and a bunch of guys in my dorm (who were total strangers to her) came together and tried to keep her on the phone.
We called the local authorities and made sure emergency personnel showed up in time to save her.
32. All For Nothing
For my high school graduation, my mom threw a party for me. My mom is known for throwing amazing parties. She invited all of my friends as well as my family. I had my cousin serve as DJ, and my other cousin catered for us from his bakery. My sisters are hairdressers and makeup artists, so they made me look really nice.
I am in very few pictures from that night. My friends avoided me all night, but they still ate all the food and hung out in my backyard while I explained shamefacedly to my cousins why everyone from my high school sucked. That was the last time I saw a majority of those people.
33. Rule Of Thumb
I remember my friends sent one of their friends a letter saying that he'd been scouted to play for the England Junior Cricket Team. Official letter heading and everything. His grandparents, parents, and siblings all got informed and for a few days, he genuinely believed it. Then they told him the awful truth.
Kids are mean. Why would you boycott a free party that sounded like it was going to be awesome? Kids are mean AND dumb. Never turn down a free party.
34. Last-Minute Stand-Ins
I have a friend who is rather well-liked in our college. She has lots of friends and last night was her birthday. She rented a party bus and invited 100+ people...but only 10 showed up out of the 50+ who RSVP'd to her personally. She ended up recruiting her cousin's bachelorette party last minute (they happened to be in the same city on the same night), luckily, to defray the costs of the party bus.
35. Bunch Of Flakes
My friend invited her seven friends and me to a birthday lunch at Applebee's. It was her 20th birthday. I was the first to arrive and we waited and waited. No one showed up, so we grabbed a table just for ourselves. We continued to wait. Finally, my friend called her friends to check where they were. They just completely flaked. I was the only person who attended.
I felt bad that I gave her some cash as a birthday gift. Stupid inconsiderate friends!
36. A Calculated Ditch
When I was 15 years old, some friends and I had invited this guy who wasn't really popular to hang out in the town park with lunch all set up. But right before we were supposed to meet, everyone started saying, "Let's ditch him before he gets here". Everyone got up, went into town, and this guy came walking into the park looking around all alone.
My girlfriend and I decided to stay with him and hang out. We ended up going to a party that the others weren't invited to. The next morning in class, they were wondering where we were and we told them we were at a party. We asked them, "Where were you guys"? and they said, "At home doing homework"! Ha!
37. When A Friendship Fades
My best friend insisted he throw me a bachelor party a couple of months before my wedding. Every now and then, I'd ask him what we were doing and he would just kind of say, "Oh yeah, I gotta plan it". He knows I don't drink or anything, so I just expected something simple like a dinner followed by a session at the range or something else manly.
The night before the wedding, I still hadn't heard anything. That's when I started to get a bad feeling.
When I called him to ask what he had planned, he said: "Oh, uh...I guess I just forgot". He then had the balls to show up to the wedding. To be honest, I actually wasn't angry and we all had fun. I stopped hearing from him regularly after that and I haven't seen or heard from him in over seven months. This was especially devastating since we'd been friends for years and I helped him through a massive breakup.
38. No Pony For You
When I was seven, my mother hired a pony and a cart to come to my house for all the kids. I got a really bad rash from the pony, so I never got to ride it. All the other kids got to ride the pony though. I literally had to go inside, and my mother was rubbing cream on me, for probably three hours. By the time I got out, the pony was already in the truck and around the corner. So that was my worst birthday.
39. Big, Empty Room
For my 16th birthday, I invited all of my friends to go for dinner. We booked the party room at the restaurant as well, and we told the staff we needed a table for 20 people. Only like five of them showed up...The rest of them told me afterward that 1) They weren't allowed to go (even though I saw most of them in pictures of them at a party from the same night), and 2) One of the guys said he had to go to his grandma's.
Basically, we had to use the big room for just the six of us. I'm pretty sure the waitress laughed at me.
40. Waiting, And Waiting...
For my fifth birthday, I invited everybody in my kindergarten class, so around 25 kids. We bought all of the party stuff for this event: napkins, plates, streamers, these Scooby-Doo invitations, everything...even a big cake. So the day of the party finally arrived and I sat out in our driveway waiting for people to come. I was out there for a good hour before I realized that no one was gonna show.
So I went inside and cried for a good while. I haven't celebrated my birthday since.
41. Fully Closed Off
A really close friend of mine posted this long rant about how miserable she was with her life. Being one of her best friends, I left her a message letting her know that I'd always be there for her. Two days later, she answered. It was not the reply I expected.
She said, "I'd rather gouge my own eyes out with a spoon. Screw off". Okay, what the heck? I asked her if I had done something to tick her off and she told me, "No, my problems are my own, just screw off". I haven't spoken to her since.
42. Mother Nature Steals Thunder
I got my nephew super excited for his Star Trek-themed birthday party. Tons of people from his school and baseball team said they would be there. The party had been planned for weeks, I even made Star Trek shirts for the kids. On the day of the party, my mom and a friend of mine showed up and that was it. Most of the excuses were the same—it was the first nice day in a while, so they went to the beach instead.
43. She Did Him Dirty
My eight-year-old brother had one of those cheesy McDonalds parties one year over a long weekend and he had given his teacher the invites to give out. She forgot. No one knew about the party and he and I sat there while he cried.
44. Totally Blindsided
Someone I used to have a crush on while we were at school has their 21st coming up. Naturally, there's a Facebook event set up, and all the people on her friends' list got an invite. I happened to notice it and I thought, "Hey, I might actually be able to have something resembling a social life for once"! Nope. I checked back a couple of hours later—the event was deleted, and I'd been removed from her friends' list.
45. The Prank Backfired
My class conspired to vote me on to homecoming court during our senior year. I knew what they were doing because obviously, I wasn't that popular. They weren't the smartest group though, because I had a great time performing a waltz with one of the hottest girls in school, who I am still friends with to this day.
46. The Lonely Cookout
For my 20th birthday party, I planned to have a big BBQ. I bought the meat, the cake, the corn, everything...and I invited 50 people. NO ONE SHOWED UP. Not one person.
47. Prom Trauma
I decided that I would go to my junior prom, even though I had no date and all of three friends at that time, none of whom were going. I mowed lawns to rent a tux, and since my dad was working, I started walking toward my school on the night of the prom. As I was walking down the sidewalk, a group of dudes drove past me in a convertible going the opposite direction. They slowed down and asked me if I was going to the prom.
I recognized a couple of them as popular kids in my school, so I said yes. They said they'd swing around and give me a ride. They made a U-turn, and I saw one of them move to the backseat of the car (the top was down). It was beginning to get dark, and I couldn't see too well, but I thought I saw him make some kind of motion, saying: "Come on"! Then, everything went black.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was in an ambulance. I freaked out. There was blood on my tux, and EMTs were standing next to me. I asked them in a confused teenager sort of way, what the heck happened and where I was. They told me someone had reported seeing me lying on the sidewalk, unconscious and bleeding. I was dumbstruck.
I said I didn't remember anything other than waiting to get a ride from someone. There was, apparently, a full case of drink cans sitting very close by to where I was knocked out, which they believed I had been hit in the head with. Then it all came to me in one very terrible instant. I was struck paralyzed with fear as my brain pieced together what must have happened.
When I saw that guy stand up in the backseat, making a hand motion, he must have been throwing something at me. In the darkness, I didn't see it coming and I was caught off guard when it hit me. They said I was curled up in the fetal position when they found me, which I don't remember. I remember NOTHING from that time; just the car coming towards me and waking up in the ambulance.
The authorities took away the drink cans as evidence, and apparently, they had a lot of my blood on them. Of course, every person in that car covered for one another, and as such, there were no arrests or disciplines of any kind. I knew it was them, though. That's the only thing that makes sense to me, 10 years later.
I never went to another prom.
48. All By Myself
My entire fourth-grade year, I had not one friend. Every single recess and lunchtime break was spent walking alone by myself with only my own thoughts to comfort me and keep me occupied. My teacher made an announcement to the entire class before lunchtime on my birthday, saying, "Now, I want someone to play with Brent this lunchtime. Whoever does will get lollies".
That didn't help. Out of all the lunchtimes in my life, I have never had one as lonely as that.
49. Chat Chum
My mom frequented a 50+ age-group chat room during the mid-'90s. The regulars eventually started organizing meetups, for which they'd later expound upon the great time that was had and the wonderful people they met in person. One such regular was a quadriplegic gentleman whose personal aid would type for him. He'd been to a few local meetups, and everyone really seemed to admire his personality and spirit.
He was on a fixed income and saved his money for nearly a year to fly (without his aid) to a meetup on the U.S. east coast. Only, when he was wheeled out to the terminal, no one was waiting for him, and no one ever came. He spent 10 hours, sitting alone, helpless and hoping that the alleged woman who invited him (and promised to host him at her house) was just very late.
Eventually, he got help from a passerby. Someone even had the heart to help the guy try calling listed names in the phone book but to no avail. He showed up online again a week later, disheartened and angry that he'd let some cold-hearted jerk get the better of him under multiple screen names and personalities.
Even at age 14 when I didn't give two hecks about chat room drama, my faith in humanity was lost a bit.
50. The Birthday Curse
It was my sweet sixteen. We were really poor, so I never had birthday parties. On several occasions, my family would even forget it was my birthday. So for my sixteenth, I convinced my parents to let me have a party in our family room. I decorated it, bought an outfit, made a bunch of food, meticulously planned the music, and invited over 100 people.
My budget was very small and I wasn't super popular, but I wasn't a pariah either. It was a big deal for me and I expected at least my closest friends to show...but I was SO wrong.
Not one person showed up. I sat there for hours in my party dress, just waiting. Eventually, I started to cry and my parents got mad because my crying was interrupting their TV show. To top it all off, they sent me to my room. I think that was the year I realized my birthday is cursed.
Sources: Reddit,
