23 of the Worst Things That Happened on Someone’s Birthday

I’ve had 34 birthdays, and I still can’t entirely decide how I feel about them. In one sense, they’re a strange celebration of a 24-hour chunk that’s only significant thanks to the mish-mash of calendars from previous civilizations that we’ve ended up using. Which, especially when you consider how many people share your birthday, feels a little less like a personal triumph and more like it’s your section’s turn to stand up in the crowd during a never-ending planetary wave.

Zoom out on that planet, though, and there is a cool celestial meaning behind it. “Once more ‘round the sun” is a bona fide banger of a phrase, even if it teeters on tilting into full existentialism. In other words, I’m not sure I consider my own birthday so massively special, certainly not enough to arrange a week of events around it. Still, if I had my choice, I’d like it to be a generally good day. 

Below, Redditors who had no say in the matter shared the worst thing that’s ever happened to them on their birthday, including one person who should probably stop having parties.