Tell Me A Story, Please!

Hi guys! It’s Friday and it’s suddenly August somehow and some of us have been very busy bees and just want to kick back and relax and let a bunch of fun stories carry us through the last hours before it’s the freakin’ weekend. I know you are all bursting with anecdotes, so today let’s share stories about the best and worst birthdays we’ve ever had.

I’ll start.

The Best

My 24th birthday happened to fall on the very same day that a local sporting squad was competing in a national sporting championship. I had invited all of my friends over for a very catweazley evening of booze, board games, cake, and more booze, but I was met with a wall of “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SPORTING MATCH?!?!??!?!?!” This angered me, as I have never given even the tiniest shit about sports. The evening began with me and two of my roommates playing Mystery Date and drinking sweet tea vodka and lemonade cocktails, as I stewed in righteous anger, but then a magical thing happened! The local sportsmen sported their very hardest, and they won the match! And suddenly my house was full of very excited and drunk friends! And suddenly I was also excited and drunk! And suddenly we were parading down the street wearing weird hats and carrying with us a cougar statue and several hobby horses as cars honked and people yelled and fireworks went off in the distance! Though I knew the celebrations were sports-related, I chose to believe that everybody was just really amped that it was my birthday.

The Worst

I spent my entire 21st birthday not getting crunk as one is supposed to do, but helping my family get ready to move from a house into a two bedroom apartment by sorting through a mountain of junk trying to separate the garbage we wanted to keep from the garbage we wanted to put in the garbage, driving things to Goodwill, packing my own stuff, and cleaning everything.

Your turn!

About catweazle

Catweazle is an 11th century wizard trying to make his way through the modern world while living in a disused water tower with his pet toad.

44 Responses to Tell Me A Story, Please!

  1. I’ve never really cared about my birthday, so I don’t have many good stories. The best that I can remember was probably my 25th, when friends, who were sick of me not celebrating, basically forced me to go out to a Mexican restaurant and plied me with margaritas and then we went dancing and I eventually hooked up with a guy I’d had my eye on for a while. It was basically what you always hope a “going out” night will be but almost never is.

    The worst was probably when my whole family basically forgot about it because we’d had a surprise party for my brother the day before (he was born in the same month as me, and that was the only date my sister-in-law could get everyone together). I wasn’t really upset, and everyone clearly felt horrible once they realized, but still, it obviously wasn’t the best feeling. I had fancy French toast later, and that helped.

    There has been kind of a trend of weird, random stuff happening to me on my birthday, but I’m not comfortable going into most of it with the whole “using my real name” thing. One incident involves a celebrity, though! But it was a very boring incident, involving a very boring celebrity, so don’t worry that you’re missing out on anything.

  2. Casey says:

    No birthdays really jump out to me. I’m perhaps secretly a bit of a birthday hater. One year some friends and I went out for churrascaria, which was pretty awesome.

    • catweazle says:

      Tell a story about something else then! You’re not getting off that easy.

      • Casey says:

        I don’t know why this comes to mind, but once upon a time, around college, 10 years or so ago (*cough cough*), I was living with my grandparents. I basically got to freeload off of them in a nice house in a nice part of town, which was great, but I would also help them out and take them to their (many) doctors appointments and grocery shopping and stuff and help do some very mild nursing type stuff for my grandpa who was recovering from a knee-replacement procedure and also in the beginning stages of “the end” as it were. Anyway, they were wonderful people and could be very imaginative. My grandma, in particular. One ongoing thread in her tapestry was “Whitey,” the name she gave to a white cockatiel that escaped from somebody’s house a while back and was trying to make it as part of a flock of feral parrots. Her plan was to catch Whitey if he landed in her yard and sell him (?) because I guess cockatiels are where the money are. One day during a particularly grim stretch, I was chauffeuring them to an appointment in their boat-like Cadillac Sedan de Ville. Spirits were down, everyone was silent when suddenly, my grandma’s eyes lighted up (I don’t know if they actually did–I was driving and watching the road, remember?!) as she craned her neck from the back seat to look out the windshield. “Is that…? It is! It’s WHITEY!” she exclaimed, and suddenly all was light and optimistic in the car again. Of course, it was just a white pigeon, but I didn’t tell her that–such is the importance of Whitey! She passed away last year and I miss her. Her house is still empty, though, so many times my family meets there for little get togethers and it’s pretty awesome.

        • Casey says:

          Addendum: a few years later, I saw Whitey with my own two eyes. He was real!

        • catweazle says:

          Feral parrots?!??!?

        • old man fatima says:

          When I was 13 I had an ancient rabbit named Hershey. Hershey was older than me, so was already well beyond the rabbit life expectancy. I went away for the summer and Hershey went to stay with my grandparents. When I came home, her (empty) cage was in my backyard. I knew she was ancient, so I figured it had been her time and I called my grandma to ask. My grandma, bless her, gave me this quite frankly ridiculous story about having taken Hershey camping, and every day the wild rabbits at the campground would come and hang out with Hershey, and one morning they woke up and the cage door was open and Hershey was gone, but then when they drove away Hershey came out of the woods with her new rabbit friends to say goodbye and she looked very happy.

          I was like “Grandma, I am basically a grown up. I know Hershey was an old rabbit, and I know she died.” but she REFUSED to admit it. Every time she and my grandpa went camping she’d tell me she saw Hershey. Like, well into my 20s when Hershey would have been in her 30s (note: rabbits generally live around 10 years). The best part is, my mom wholeheartedly believed her. Any time I brought it up, she’d be like “Your grandma saw her last week!!” and wouldn’t hear another word about it.

        • Sota says:

          Sounds like an “Adventures of Whitey” comic book is just waiting to be written!

        • Casey says:

          catweazle: yes! I don’t know about other areas, but in lots of communities in Southern California escaped parrots flock together to live out their dreams as urban explorers. Maybe “feral” is not the word.

          Fatima: I love your story. Why are grandmas the best?

          Sota: will you draw it?!

        • Sota says:

          Hershey can be a character too! You bet I will draw it! I am pretty excited about this! It’s gonna be as big as Atomic County! (Future Spoiler Alert to Catweazle’s OC Season 2 Recaps)

        • Commentatrix says:

          My late grandparents’ house aka “my fav place to be as a child” is also empty right now, but from what I hear it has really gone to seed over the years. I think the plan is for one of my uncles to buy everyone else out (there are 6 other siblings) and hopefully restore it, which is nice in theory, but it will no longer belong to everyone, as it felt like when I was growing up and my grandmother was alive. Ugh. Why is growing up so painful?

  3. welcometocostcoiloveyou says:

    The best birthday was when Mr. Costco proposed to me. It was at a time where I literally ate nothing but Chinese food for dinner, and he kept pushing to go out to dinner. I really never care about my birthday, so I was all, “Let’s not go out. I don’t care.” He finally convinced me to go to PF Changs, and it turns out he had brought them fortune cookies ahead of time to give us at the end of the meal. He had a “Will you marry me?” fortune in the cookies!! It was super sweet, and just the best!

    I don’t have a “worst” birthday, but it’s never very exciting. I don’t have a huge social circle, and it seems really hard to round everyone up for a celebration. I think that’s probably why I don’t care about my birthday – I figure if I build it up, it will probably be disappointing. I guess that’s kind of depressing, but I also figure that I am an adult and can treat myself to cake and presents any day of the year!

  4. artdorkgirl says:

    My birthdays tend to be pretty low-key. Usually a bunch of us go out to the bar, grab a beer, and bitch and gossip and just chill. The worst birthday was about 3 years ago when Mr. Dork and I were having some troubles which all came to a head the day before my birthday. : ( On the plus side, my friends took me out to Oktoberfest and I got super drunk and danced on the tables to an Oompah Band playing Sweet Home Alabama. So….silver lining???

  5. Sota says:

    I don’t really have a best or a worst, but rather I will just tell you a birthday drunk story. I forced my friend to go out with me for drinks at our usual bar on my actual birthday which was a weeknight. I had another shindig planned over the weekend, but I knew my fav bartenders would spoil me on my actual birthday. Anyways…one shot led to another and basically it ended with my friend and I heading home via the NYC subway at about 3 am where I stubbornly refused help in swiping my Metrocard. In actuality, I was swiping my drivers license and all my credit cards and library card in the machine and not capable of figuring out why it wasn’t working. They finally had to let me through the exit door. Miraculously I didn’t lose my credit cards and I actually made it to work the next day.

  6. old man fatima says:

    I don’t believe in luck, *in theory*, but I have terrible luck on my birthdays. I’ve spent 4 birthdays in the hospital, and I have only been in the hospital those 4 times! I was dumped on my birthday twice, once after walking in on my boyfriend boinking my roommate at my party. I found out that my brother was doing a second tour in Afghanistan AND that he was putting me as his emergency contact on my birthday, and on my next birthday when he was overseas I got a series of calls from an unknown number that I refused to answer because I was sure it was about him (so spent the night sobbing alone in my apt) (turned out it was him calling to say happy bday and let me know he was fine because he knows I have awful bday luck) (and then calling in a panic because he knows I have awful bday luck and I wasn’t answering so he thought something awful happened to me). My worst birthday is hard to pick. I was hit by a truck on my 23rd birthday and almost lost a leg. That might be the one…

    Tie for my best birthday is every birthday where I’ve had to work and just ignored that it was my birthday at all. One of those days, a coworker brought me some leftover tiramisu, not knowing it was my bday. That was a pretty great day.

    • catweazle says:

      Maybe this is all just the universe’s way of telling you that you’re supposed to be a Jehovah’s Witness.

    • Kate says:

      Woah. Dude. We need to throw you a proper birthday party for your next one. Or maybe a celebratory “day after your birthday” party when you survive one unscathed.

    • Sota says:

      I have a plan for you! Pick a new birthday and wash away all that bad luck voodoo! Plus if you really commit to it, you can totally blow people’s minds later in life, like my grandfather, who we found out after he died that St Patrick’s Day wasn’t really his birthday. He just decided that he would rather have a birthday on a holiday and we all thought it was true forever!

      • old man fatima says:

        I like this plan! But what if I just end up with two bad luck days every year instead of one, AND one of them is a holiday???

        • Sota says:

          There’s no way you could be that unlucky…just don’t pick your new birthday on your current birthday or it would trigger some sort of bermuda triangle scenario.

    • Commentatrix says:

      This birthday curse has to be broken! Maybe a priest can help, idk! Is that a thing, Catholic monsters?

  7. Commentatrix says:

    I have a terrible memory, so I literally sat here for a LOT of minutes trying to think of what I did on my birthday during the [moderately] fun college years, but as my birthday is in the summer, I probably missed out on birthday fun altogether… Come to think of it, I’ve very rarely been around friends on my birthday because my family moved around so much during my early years AND I went to boarding high school many states away from where I lived. And now in adulthood it’s even harder to get people together. I bet that’s where my birthday hate stems from! You mean, I’m getting older, my “stock” is plummeting (they say), and I’m not even gonna get to drink with the people I actually enjoy spending time with? Fuck birthdays!

    Anyway, last year I had this summer job where my colleagues were primarily youngsters, so a group of my work friends dragged me out for my birthday and it ended up being pretty fun! We stayed out really late and drank way too much on a school night. And then the night quickly devolved into the worst when I got back to my temporary living quarters (that I was sharing with two other people) and promptly projectile vommed in/around the toilet and sink in the shared bathroom. Like, very little of it made it into an actual receptacle. It was messy, guys. Gross, one might say if they’d seen it. But because I’m basically a considerate human being full of shame, I mustered up all of my motor skills and presence of mind to clean everything up right away. Best part? No hangover the next morning.

    • old man fatima says:

      Simultaneous lol and 😦 at “stock plummeting”

      I’m 31 this month, you guys. I’m starting to creak and I can feel my mustache getting ready to sprout.

  8. This is neither best nor worst, but I have a strange birthday story: A year and a half ago, I arrived at work on my birthday and found my office cube decorated. It was very extensive – streamers, balloons, banners, those hanging decoration things, confetti, etc. There was a lot of work someone put into it. I thought it was my friend (who also left a present and a note) but it wasn’t her. I thought it was maybe my boss, but nope. Then I thought mr. truck or one of my friends or family snuck in or got someone else to do it, but nope. I asked if it was any of the secretaries, but no, they don’t do that for anyone else’s birthday. This is not a thing that has happened for anyone else in the office. I thought eventually whoever did it would come forward to claim credit, but nope. I still have no idea who did it. (this year, it didn’t happen again) It’s to the point where I’m kind of creeped out by it – I mean, who would do that? No one I know admitted it, no one ever took credit! A secret admirer who lost the courage to admit it? I’LL NEVER KNOW!!!!

  9. old man fatima says:

    Let me tell you a story that has nothing to do with birthdays, though. When I was a kid I had this book with stories about animals from all around the world. There was one called Katchen the cat that was from Eastern Europe somewhere and I was obsessed with it.

    Katchen the cat lived with his owner, a kindly old lady, and was spoiled rotten. He ate nothing but fresh fish, he spent his whole day in her lap or looking out windows, and he was fat an healthy with a thick, shiny coat of fur. When the old lady died, a rumour spread through the village that she had never married because she was secretly very wealthy and she was afraid of a husband loving her only for her wealth. The villagers tore her house to the ground looking for her gold, and poor Katchen was left without a place to live. He spent a year on the streets. his coat lost its shine, he grew very very thin, and his eyes were dull. One day, Katchen knew he was close to death and lay down in the gutter to die. An old wizard came upon him and made him an offer. “I will take you into my home for one year. I will feed you and brush you and spoil you and give you a warm, dry place to sleep. At the end of this year, you will let me skin you to make a new pair of gloves.”

    Katchen thought about this. ‘It is very likely that I will die today,’ he thought. ‘Why not live another year in luxury?’ And so Katchen went back with the wizard to his house and put his paw print on the contract that the wizard drew up. For about 6 months, Katchen lived happily with the wizard. He grew fat again, his fur shone. He forgot that he had ever been scared or hungry or filthy. One night, he met a lady cat and they fell in love. They lived together on a rooftop and had kittens together, and then suddenly Katchen remembered that it was almost time for his contract to be up. His little wife noticed that he was sad and asked him what was wrong. After he told her, she said “Don’t worry, Katchen. I have a plan.”

    When a year had passed, Katchen returned to the wizard. “I was going to go looking for you,” said the wizard, “I thought you were running away from our contract!” “I am an honourable cat,” replied Katchen.”My only regret is that I never got to show my wife where my mistress hid her gold. I would love to know my family will be taken care of after I’m gone.” The wizard’s eyes lit up! “If you tell me where the gold is, I will split it with your little wife and your family will be well taken care of.” he promised. “How will I know you won’t take it all for yourself?” asked Katchen. Finally, Katchen agreed to take the wizard to the gold so that he could see with his own eyes that half of it went to his wife, and then he would allow the wizard to turn him into gloves.

    Katchen, his wife, and the wizard all went to the spot where his old mistress’ house once stood and Katchen began poking around. Under the stairs? No, not there. Was it in the pantry? No, hmm can’t seem to remember. Just as the wizard was starting to get frustrated with him, Katchen jumped up. “I remember where it is now!” He led the wizard to an old well and they pulled off the cover. The wizard looked in and saw the sun reflecting off the water at the bottom. “I can see the gold!” He yelled, just as Katchen and his wife pushed him into the well and sealed it back up. The wizard was so angry that he turned into a water snake (ok?) and lived the rest of his days steaming in rage in the well, and Katchen and his wife lived happily ever after.

    I used to tell this story to Catticus when I brushed him. He was like steel wool and super patchy and mangy when I lured him in off the street and I would always tell him I was only feeding him until he was shiny enough to make a good pair of gloves. After I got his ashes back I realized, fuck, that cat waited his whole life to be made into gloves and it never happened! RIP Maximus. You’re a glove in my heart, little dude.

    • old man fatima says:

      Also, the wizard was kind of fair? Like, maybe a bit of a shitty person, but he did save Katchen’s life and Katchen signed that contract fair and square… I don’t know guys. Maybe Katchen and his wife are the bad guys in this story?

      • artdorkgirl says:

        Nope. Cat justice is correct justice. That’s the way cat’s work.

      • Sota says:

        This is QUITE a story. My question: if he is a wizard then why was he unable to spell himself out of the well?

        • old man fatima says:

          Or spell himself a pair of cruelty-free gloves??? The only indication we have of him being a wizard is them saying it over and over, and him turning into a water snake in rage. But it kind of sounds like it was the rage that turned him into a water snake, and not his wizardry.

        • Wallflower says:

          Maybe his power as a wizard came from cat gloves? Not a great wizard, but we all can’t be (insert favorite wizard here).

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