In life you often don't always get what you want- that much is already a given. Birthday presents are no different, but sometimes you get a gift so bad that you can't help but scratch your head and think "Why?" Well, the folks in these stories share the absolutely worst birthday presents they've ever received.
This Is Just Cruel
“When I was 15 or so, my wealthy father and step-mom (whom I’d see maybe 3 times a year) got me that one card that says something like, ‘You know what’s better than getting $20 on your birthday?! Getting $100!’ on the cover. I’m sure my eyes visibly bulged with delight as I read it. When you open it though, it says, ‘Well, you’re getting neither!’ My dad and stepmom proceeded to laugh at me and take pictures as tears welled up in my eyes.
What kind of adult would do such a thing?
I’m pretty sure the card is supposed to be followed up by a gift equaling or exceeding a $100 value or is meant to be given only to someone you’re not particularly fond of. At the very least, should not be given by a wealthy parent to a child who lives in a trailer park in the poorest neighborhood in town. They did not get me anything except the card. I would have preferred not getting anything at all (I’ve never been bothered by not receiving gifts, as I have rarely had enough money to buy other people gifts).
Looking back, I suspect this is marked the point where I began to not see my dad as my dad. These days, he is just a stranger with whom I share some DNA.”
This Is Not A Gift For A 9-Year-Old
“The awfulness of my gift is only surpassed by the buildup that preceded it and the terrible realization that followed.
I was 9-years-old. I was way into Legos and my SNES. It was fairly obvious since that’s all I would play with or talk about. My birthday happened in June and I got some cool stuff from my extended family, but my parents were kind of poor then. My mother sat me down and explained to me that they couldn’t get me a gift right now, but if I was patient and could wait a few weeks, they would get me something awesome.
I was a very well-behaved kid so I said no problem. One month passed and she asked me to wait again. Another month passed and still asked me to wait. My sister’s birthday came in this period. They got her something because she was younger. She wouldn’t understand how to be patient. It was about four to five months later that I was told that they had gotten me something. I was elated. I had been such a good boy. I knew that they got me something awesome. My patience was finally paying off.
I was to open the present at my grandparent’s house, where we were having a casual dinner between my grandparents, my parents, and my grandparent’s friends from out of town. I was so well behaved and I impressed the heck out of my grandparent’s friends. I was really bound for best kid ever I thought. We all talked and talked. Dinner was served. Dishes were washed. Finally, I got to open my gift.
Everyone was watching me. We were all excited. I opened it up and I found:
One Makita Cordless Power Drill and one Box of Interchangeable Makita Bits.
What?
I had no idea what I was going to do with this thing. I was 9-years-old for crying out loud! I wanted to sob. This wasn’t fun. This was for working. I was a child. I mean what can you even do with just a drill? I didn’t own any other power tools. Was I supposed to just go around making holes?
The shock was on my face and I looked up and everyone was staring at me looking for a reaction. I felt betrayed, but I couldn’t let everyone there down. It would have embarrassed the heck out of my whole family if my grandparent’s friends knew how badly they messed up. So I cheered. I opened it up and pretended to be interested. Everyone was so happy. I was still a good boy.
The ride home was somber for me. I think I just fell asleep. I just didn’t even want to be conscious anymore. I got home and put the drill in my room and went to bed. I woke up the next day and my dad asked me if he could see my drill. I didn’t care so I said, ‘Fine.’ It took me a while to work this one out. You see my dad is a machinist. He didn’t have a power drill. I thought we just kept my drill in the garage since that’s where tools went.
The drill was actually kept in the garage because the drill was never for me.
It was for my dad’s job and they figured that they could kill two birds with one stone. I honestly would’ve preferred waiting another month or two and just gotten a toy that was worth a fraction of what that drill was. I’m not going to lie. I see that year as the birthday they skipped after lying to me.
I’ve used that drill a couple of times over my entire life. Every single time I was either fixing something in my parent’s house or working on a project for my dad in his shop. I left it when I went to college. My dad ‘gifted’ it to me about four years into college. I have since donated it to Goodwill. I don’t really miss it.”
A Not So Sweet 16
“The morning of my 16th birthday, my mother woke me up early for a special surprise. She blindfolds me and we get in the car. When the blindfold comes off, we are standing in front of our local teaching hospital, where I normally go for doctor’s appointments. Okay. A little weird but there could still be something cool inside, right?
Nope. I was wrong. So horribly dead wrong. Mom then says she’s scheduled me for my first ever OB/GYN appointment, because ‘I’m finally a woman.’
I was nervous to say the least. We sit in the waiting room until it’s my turn. I’m not even sure what to expect. My mom asks if I want her to come with me. I shake my head profusely no.
Since this is a teaching hospital, my doctor is there with an intern and a nurse. So, already three people to examine my ladyparts. I sort of laid there with my eyes closed to avoid looking at anyone directly, and they mumble doctor stuff for a few minutes. And then – ‘OH WOW GET THE INTERNS IN HERE NOW!’ I am confused and alarmed, as I had been completely shutting out their conversation up until this point. I honestly thought something was seriously wrong with me.
About three more interns enter, so we now have not three, but SIX people to stare intently between my legs. Now I know what’s so exciting – apparently, I have no labia minora. What? Are we done yet? Nope! Apparently this is a teachable moment for the students. They discuss for a few minutes about how this is unusual, and then everyone leaves again. I felt like a weird specimen under a microscope. To top it all off, my doctor, an older man, congratulates me on my cool and weird ladyparts then tells me to come back soon. Great.”
“I Hate Birthdays”
“When I was 19 I was arrested for violating a girl I had only met once at a wedding two years before. She cheated on her boyfriend and said it was me for some reason. The two went down to the police station and filed a report. Then a warrant was later put out for my name.
The cops arrested me at my job on campus, but after being questioned for five hours I was able to prove my innocence. The police released me and I let out a sigh of relief. It was my 19th birthday and it had already been a rough start but I thought I could turn it around by going out for a drink. The girl who was charged for filling a false police report by the way.
But anyways, I get to a bar and while flirting with a waitress a wasted customer lost his cool that she was talking to me and not bringing him chicken wings. This guy completely blinded sided me with a mug to the face then proceeded to punch me out while on the ground. After spending five hours in police detention I then spent another SIX hours in the E.R.
I get out just completely exhausted and defeated. My parents pick me up but I tell them that I just really need to be alone. It’s late at night at this point and I thought whatever. I’m going to the beach.
So it’s 3 am and I’m drinking chocolate milk on a beach thinking about my last 24 hours. I’m just watching the waves when suddenly a bright light appears out of the sky. It’s a freaking police helicopter. It was like I got five stars on Grand Theft Auto. So now I’m surrounded by police. AGAIN. They thought I was a smuggler waiting for an illegal package to run up on shore. Apparently they had gotten tipped off and I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Just great. We sort out that mix up and by now it’s 8 am. I finally make it home and just crash. I had forgotten that it was my birthday.
Next year wasn’t any better though. For my 20th, I was shot in the chest by a 12-year-old during a hunting accident. At least it was a .22. He managed to hit the sternum and it stopped the bullet though painfully. I hate birthdays.”
A Gift From Her (Now Ex) Husband
“My (now ex-) husband once gave me a wrapped present that contained an expensive shirt for himself. He gave me this present to unwrap at the restaurant where he had made reservations for us to have lunch. I had been waiting at the restaurant for 45 minutes when he arrived and gave me the present. He insisted that I open the present before we ordered because the present was for my birthday lunch. As soon as I opened the gift, he took off his band t-shirt and put on the new shirt – at the table in this quite high-end restaurant during the downtown lunchtime rush.
He explained that he bought me the t-shirt for himself as a present since he didn’t have a nice shirt for dressing up. Also, that was the reason he was close to an hour late for lunch – he was buying the shirt FOR the lunch. That was the only present I got that year. Later, when the bill arrived, he got up and said he’d wait outside while I paid since he didn’t have any money left in his account after buying the shirt for $240. Given that this was a joint account, I also now had no money. It was somewhere around then that I started crying.”
A Hernia And A Cool Dinosaur For His Birthday
“I was looking forward to my 8th birthday for weeks because I had found my present in my parents’ closet. It was a sick T-Rex figurine wearing these cool as heck dark sunglasses. Pretty freaking epic.
I couldn’t sleep the night before the big day. I was just bristling with anticipation like a freak. I lay in bed wide awake for about five hours just shivering because I was so excited. I woke up and actually got sick at one point. Okay? Pretty weird but I was an excitable kid I guess.
On the day of my birthday, I was literally sweating at the dinner table after we had cake. Like profusely sweating. Like my brow was dripping wet because I knew my mom was going into her room to get the present. My knees were shaking uncontrollably and I started getting slightly dizzy. ‘No!’ I thought. This couldn’t be it! Not this close to the prize!
I thought it was just the sugar or the whipped cream from my cake that was making me nauseous, so I didn’t say a word. I just sat there about to explode, staring intently with furious concentration at the door. I thought I was gonna pop a blood vessel.
When she finally came in, literally as she was mouthing the words ‘Happy Birthd-‘ an excruciating pain shot up my body. I felt like god had struck me down. I could feel the pain from where my appendix used to be (had gotten it removed a year earlier), and into just underneath my ribs. I tried my best to ignore it because I wanted that T-Rex so freaking much. But the pain only got worse and worse. I was trying so hard to keep a straight face that I just kept staring at my mom like a freak. At this point she had just stopped talking and was now looking at me in horror because I had gone beetroot red. I felt another jolt of pain strike my body and then I suddenly blacked out.
I woke up dazed in the hospital later that day. Turns out I had a hernia I was so excited, and I had burst a few blood vessels in my temples from trying to suppress the pain. Talk about concentration. Kids do the weirdest things.
Still got the T-Rex so I guess it wasn’t that bad, hernia and all.”
“The Most Miserable Birthday In My Adult Life”
“My birthday is the day after Christmas, so it typically has been a lame birthday. No real recognition of it, gifts, etc, which is cool because I’m not materialistic anyways.
My father passed away on December 23, and since then the holidays have been different. I’d rather spend the time grieving and honoring his memory anyway, This year was especially rough and callous though.
My mom asked me to drive my deadbeat 24-year-old brother to work at 5 in the morning on my birthday. He has no car, no aspirations, and is generally a loser. That was alright, but I had planned to grab lunch with a close friend for my day’s celebration. She made me promise to cancel any plans because she had something ‘special’ planned for me. For once, I was actually flattered by my mother. Except for one thing. Those plans kind of never happened.
She brought me out shopping for a TV as my birthday/Christmas gift (which I didn’t want, I’m not materialistic, and don’t watch TV) but I went along with it anyways. When we got to the store, she changed her mind and began shopping for my brother instead. Fast forward a half-hour, she was trying to get me to help her pick out a camera for him, a scanner for her, and nothing for me.
I asked if we could at minimum go out for drinks or dinner, and she asked me what I had in mind. Before I could answer, she said ‘Oh, nevermind, we’re going to this new Mexican place, it’s really classy and I heard good things about it.’
This new-fangled Mexican restaurant?
It was Chipotle. I canceled lunch with my friend for CHIPOTLE. I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the place but are you kidding me?!
Except it only gets worse from there! You know what’s worse than Chiptole? Not getting Chiptole at all! Heck we wound up not even getting any food because my deadbeat brother was too tired from work. Boohoo.
The night came to a climax after I drank a six-pack of Bud and was forced to either attend an AA meeting or get kicked out of the house because my mom was convinced I was a raging drinker.
Absolutely the most miserable birthday in my adult life. Thanks, mom!”
A Foul Trick To Play On A Child
“Clothes on layaway which I never got. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept (I’m not sure if it is employed outside of America, honestly) lay-away was a system where you could essentially reserve items. If you found something you liked but didn’t have the money for you took it to the layaway counter where it was kept until you had paid the item in full.
I was taken clothes shopping, something which rarely happened as we never had much money growing up, and told I had a $300 dollar limit. I was ecstatic. The clothes I had been wearing for years – which had rips, tears, holes, stains and had been the subject of plenty of ridicule from many people at school – were finally on their way out for new, stylish clothes! After spending an hour picking out a variety of different designs and brands we work our way to the register, only for my mother to stop me and exclaim ‘I forgot my cash!’
‘Not to worry,’ she said, ‘we will put it on lay-away and come back for it tomorrow.’
Only thing was that there was never a ‘tomorrow.’
She did this many times during my life with different events (Christmas, Easter) and it never hurt any less. As a result, I don’t bother celebrating my birthday as an adult. I always have a tiny vision in the back of my head of all those clothes fit for an excited 10-year-old boy, collecting dust in the back of an ageing store, alone. The image still breaks my heart to this day.
No, I never told my mother about this but it would not have mattered otherwise. I have no idea why she did this, I have always suspected her to be bi-polar and under constant stress which leads to moments like this. I am the oldest of three boys so I often gave up many things so my brothers could benefit (sometimes willingly, mostly unknowingly). I can’t say her true intentions that day was to get my hopes up and dash them, however, this was not the first time she did something of this nature. She promised me a computer on my 12th birthday – something I had wanted for many years – but when I constantly asked her where it was the following week (a week after my birthday) she said she had ‘taken it back because I was bad.’ I could go on but I don’t want to bash her. Despite what she has done to me, she is still my mother and I respect that.”
A Strange Gift-Giver
My uncle has always been known for his bizarre gifts. He gets a lot of them from the hardware store Canadian Tire for some reason. For a while, he went through this phase of giving absolutely everyone these 10,000-candle-power flashlights for no apparent reason. They were big orange spotlights, basically and he gave them out on every occasion.
We got a couple from him, and so did my younger cousin – whom he barely knew, as the two families are barely acquainted. It was cousin’s Bar Mitzvah (excuse this for not being a birthday, or a gift to me, but it is a coming-of-age event, at least) which is the sort of affair you just invite everyone to, and a lot of people only give money.
Now my uncle, not only did he give the kid one of his famous flashlights, he full-out presented it. As soon as the mic freed up at the reception he took to the stage, uninvited and unannounced. He’s one of those crazy uncles, with a big furry unibrow and chock full of terrible, cheesy jokes. He made a speech.
‘This boy is a man now, and soon he’ll be learning to drive, and when that happens you never know when you might get stranded, out on the highway alone at night sometimes, and in that situation, you’ll need…’ – he pulls out from behind his back this gigantic, fluorescent orange thing – ‘a flashlight. But not just any flashlight, ho no!…’ He lifts the thing proudly up in the air like a fish.
My uncle is a failed actor, with a bit of over-dramatic flair. My immediate family was perhaps the most embarrassed, as the only members of the extended family present who associate themselves with this uncle of mine. The stories of this uncle and his gifts don’t end there however, we’ve got lots of strange things from the man over the years – but this next one is probably the one that sticks out most of all.
We were meeting him, my grandmother, and his two (surprisingly normal) children, both of whom were in their mid-20s and no longer living at home, for a summer birthdays get together at an Indian restaurant. The uncle had recently re-done my grandmother’s old house and was living in it, and he was particularly proud of the garden he had cultivated.
So proud, in fact, that he had decided to gift us with a gourd he had grown. It was enormous. Like a zucchini in shape, yellow in color, and probably four feet long. How he managed to grow something so large I have no clue. He presented it to us, once again with ever so much prestige, in the middle of this well-populated and relatively small restaurant, before we had even sat down to eat.
To make matters worse, no one wanted the thing. My mother had a garden of her own, and ‘It’s very nice, but what the heck am I going to make with that much squash?’
His children didn’t want it, I lived at home at the time, my brother was not interested and my grandmother was living somewhere that fed her regularly. The poor gourd ended up being left there. I’d like to think that the chef found it and decided to use it himself.
One more – On my 16th birthday he gave me a tool kit, which is cool, but instead of just giving it like any other Canadian Tire gift that I’ve come to expect he said ‘oops! I thought it was your brother’s birthday or else I would have gotten something else. Oh well, you can have it then.’ Because apparently, girls don’t need tool kits. Not even when they’re the little hobby ones. All’s well that ends well though, because I got a lot of use out of that thing, and sometimes we use the flashlights when we go canoeing at night. The Indian restaurant has since gone out of business though, and I sincerely hope it wasn’t the squash.
No Wonder He Hated His Birthdays
“My adopted parents were radically right-wing Christians and thought that getting good things would go to my head and make me a horrible sinner. They did believe in appearances, however (as hypocritical as that is). As such, they would always throw me a party where only family was invited. I would get plenty of, while not spectacular, at least decent presents from them. Then, that evening after everyone left my parents would take all of the presents I had gotten. They would pile them in the middle of the living room and beat me for every one of them. Then they would sort through them. If it was something especially secular (G.I. Joes, video games, etc) they would take them back. If it was something more basic (the bike I got from my nana on my 13th birthday, clothes, that kind of thing) they would make me work for it at a wage of about $1.50 an hour until I had ‘earned’ it. Just psycho behavior.
The only exception to this pattern was when I got something religious, but not jewelry because that was a sin and idol worship (got extra beatings for those). It got to the point that by the time I was 15 all I ever asked for were bibles. The whole family thought I was going to be a preacher when I grew up, including my parents. I haven’t seen them since the cut me off completely for missing church one Sunday while I was in college and I don’t regret it a bit. Admittedly, I’m still messed up emotionally and mentally in a lot of ways, but years in that house taught me how to be a fantastic actor.
To this day I hate my birthday. I don’t like sharing things like my past even more though, so every year I pretend to be having a great time so my friends think I’m normal. My girlfriend takes great pride in coming up with awesome parties and ideas, and I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth so I play the part. Coincidentally every year since my 18th has involved tons of spirits. With my birthday coming up on Tuesday I’ve already started getting plastered. Half the reason I’m ballsy enough sharing this with you is that I’m three quarters gone already!”