People Tell Us About Their Worst Birthdays

Our TV channel VICELAND has been on air for a full year in New Zealand. Since December 1 2016 we’ve been bringing you everything that’s important, weird, or funny you want to watch—24-hours a day, seven days a week on SKY Channel 13. We’ve taken in the majestic glory that is Matty Matheson in a Rotorua mud bath in DEAD SET ON LIFE, were first on the scene in the fight for Indigenous Rights at Standing Rock in RISE, explored the resurgence of Ta Moko in NEEDLES & PINS, been to the frontline of cannabis law reform in WEEDIQUETTE and the weaponisation of the internet in CYBERWAR and perennial VICELAND favourite Action Bronson came to Auckland and made an epic bagel with Al Brown. We love birthdays. But not everyone does, and for good reason. For no other reason than it rhymes with first, we asked people their worst birthday experiences. This is what they had to say.

So on my 19th birthday me, my two brothers and six of my closest friends went out to a bar and started pounding back the drinks. I was so hammered by the time 11 PM came around I actually had to puke in the bathroom of the bar. Anyway, from there one of my good buddies, Owen, suggests we go to the Cotton Club which is the local strip club. We are all completely loaded at this point, and as I'm heading towards the exit to leave I hear the strip club DJ say "Can Birthday Boy Ian Please Report to the Stage". It turns out Owen paid for me to get a public lap dance on the stage in front of the who strip club. My brothers literally have to drag me up there and sit me down because I was so against it.
The music starts going and a little French stripper comes strutting up to me, and tells me to take off my shirt. I’m like, "No, no, definitely not", but sure enough she rips me buttons apart. So now I'm up there in just a sleeveless undershirt tucked into my pants. After that she tells me to take my pants off. She rips off my belt and begins to wrestle to get my pants off. This is all happening while I'm sitting on a chair. I’m wrestling to keep my pants up, and she's trying to rip them down off me, and because we’re going back and forth my weight shifts back and I fall back on the chair while she goes flying back over my head onto the stage behind me. I try to gather myself on all fours on the stage and all I feel is her hand wrap around my neck, and she whispers ,"You made me fall, now you're going to pay" in her French accent.
So I'm down on all fours on the fucking stage, she rips off my undershirt with my pants down around my knees, she takes my belt and starts whipping me across the ass and back. She takes my underwear and rips those so my ass is out and she's literally like slapping me. Meanwhile all of my friends and buddies are crying laughing in the audience and cannot believe what they're seeing. For her final trick she yells out to the audience and says "Who has a lighter? I need a lighter!" Some idiot tosses her up a lighter and she bundles up my underwear as if she was going to give me a wedgie, and then fucking sets my underwear on fire. I have to slap my own ass to pat the fire out. I stand up, grab my belt, shirt, and haul up my pants only to realise my underwear is all tore up and everyone can see my ass. And I stumble off the stage in a complete frenzy, all while my friends are out of their minds laughing, and in total shock of what they just saw.

On my birthday this year only two of my friends remembered, so I was already feeling pretty depressed about it. Then after dinner I was getting birthday sex—for the first time ever I might add—and then my boyfriend prematurely ejaculated and just sent me over the edge and I started crying.

I had the worst 16th birthday. It was the first time in like a number of years that snow fell in Wellington. The school sent a message that we could have off. Sounds like a pretty good deal right? Well my parents forgot that I didn’t have to go to school. So when I woke up, no one was at the house. I waited till 1 PM. I had not heard a word from anyone. I was so livid. When Mum finally came back—she’d gone for a long horse ride—I lost it like, “WTF it’s my 16th birthday remember?” She had a massive go at me about how spoilt I am. I got no presents or any card or any nice dinner.
Mum calls up my friend’s Mum, they lived down the road and just said “we’re coming to pick up Jemma” so down we hoon to poor Jemma’s house. In silence. You could snap the tension with a knife. Jemma hops in with a look of pure cringe on her face. We drive to Johnsonville which is this shithole place out of Wellington. It’s pouring with rain. And Mum takes us to this sit down, shitty bakery for lunch. Jemma is trying to make conversation but Mum and I are just staring daggers because I’m like, Are you fucking serious Helen—a fucking bakery? Anyway we drop Jemma home. Poor thing couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Mum sped home literally dropped me off at the door and left. I just cried for the rest of the afternoon till Dad got home. He had also forgotten, but Mum had given him a full rundown of my “petulant, ungrateful behaviour” so he was mad as hell at me also. Safe to say I’ve never forgotten my super sweet 16.

I can’t remember how old I was turning I just remember that my parents forgot my birthday. I was super excited (as all young kids are) about my big day. When I woke up in the morning, Mum and Dad didn’t mention anything and Dad left early for work. I figured maybe they were going to surprise me with a party after school. I didn’t mention anything but all day I wondered what my surprise party would be like and who my parents would have invited along. After school I got home and still there was no mention of anything. Mum told us Dad was coming home late so we’d just have dinner without him. I thought this must be the surprise, that Dad was going to come home late with a birthday cake or something. By the time I went to bed I figured that Mum and Dad must have just not remembered. I asked Mum when she put me to bed if it was my birthday and she cried.