The Worst Birthday EVER

My mom was having a big birthday party for me!  Including a genuine, honest-to-goodness bakery cake!  In our family that was quite a treat because all birthday cakes began with Betty Crocker, and ended with some yucky decorating frosting that came out of a tube.  But a bakery cake?  Never.  Those rare treats were only enjoyed at graduation parties, wedding receptions, or some other very special occasion.

But not that year…

I believe it was for my fifteenth birthday.  It was the same year that I had a crush on a handsome, talented singer … and I wrote awful, mushy, sickeningly sweet stuff about him in my diary – often.

That paled though, in light of the cake, and the fact that most of our extended family would be coming to the house for my birthday.

I waited on pins and needles for Mom to get home from the bakery with my cake, and shadowed her every move until she set the large box on the counter, opened the lid, and we read,

Happy Birthday, Krispy

What?

Krispy!

Clearly whoever took the phone order had been in desperate need of hearing aids.  Being a hormonal teenager, I nearly cried in humiliation.  The cake needed to be returned … or the party cancelled.  Neither option was meant to be.  Mom simply took a butter knife from the silverware drawer and carefully removed the ‘py’ so the cake now read, ‘Happy Birthday, Kris.’

Now it’s not that I’m a stranger to the nickname, but for as long as I can recall, I wouldn’t need all five fingers on one hand to count the number of times people have called me Kris in any given year.  However…it did beat Krispy all to pieces.

Unfortunately, the cake went down a notch or two in the special department.

Fast forward a few hours…

All of the guests have arrived and are having a good time, enjoying the ruined cake, as well as all of the good company (I have a very cool family).  About then, from the open stairway, I hear some familiar words being recited … at the top of my oldest younger brother’s lungs.  He and three male cousins had sneaked into my bedroom, found my diary … and were announcing to everyone that I was in love with the singer.

Definitely a birthday to remember.

Fortunately, through the years, people have forgotten about the diary part of that day.  On the other hand, I still haven’t managed to live the whole cake thing down.  I blame my sister for this because she, her husband and their sons continue to call me Krispy.

But that’s okay.  I can be very patient.  Someday an opportunity will present itself and then it will be time for paybacks.  (Psst…not really.  I just know she sometimes reads my blog and want to make her sweat a bit, so let’s keep this our little secret, okay?)

What was the most humiliating experience during your teenage life?  Because we all know that humiliation between the ages of twelve and twenty is always the worst we’ll ever experience, right? 🙂

***Just a quick addition here.  I don’t usually post on Thursday’s, but will be putting one up tomorrow because I’m involved in my first blogfest to help promote the release of The Golden Sky by E C Stilson.

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10 Responses to The Worst Birthday EVER

  1. Pingback: Anonymous

  2. Pingback: Contemptible Culinary Calamities | Kristy K. James

  3. Yiyiyiyiyiyi. The things we remember as tragedy at that age! (And for the right price, I’ll never, ever call you Krispy —)

  4. I’m glad you read the second one then. I’d much rather make people laugh. I’m also glad that I’m not the only girl humiliated by her brothers (or in my case brother and three cousins) with diary secrets! I’ll have to give that revenge some thought, lol. Probably in a book though. It’s more fun to make a character suffer because you can be a lot meaner then. 🙂

  5. timlobrien says:

    I guess I’m reading your blogs in my emails in backwards order. The last one had me in tears of sadness, this one in tears of laughter. My brothers pulled the same stunt on my sister and announced to the world who she had a crush on. Remember, revenge is sweet!

  6. LOL…you need to post a picture of that, Karen! About as quickly as I will post some of mine from the 80’s…when I kept trying curly perms. It took several before I gave in and admitted I just have too much hair for that style (which has a startling resemblance to the Bozo the Clown style, just not orange).

    And yes, teenage years for girls are always one embarrassing moment after another. Everything is so magnified. And it doesn’t help that we all seemed to be inclined toward the dramatic either. 🙂

  7. So freaking funny! I think all of my teenage years were my most embarrassing teenage moments. I had this weird hair cut that was short & curly – the front hung all the way down & covered one eye completely. One side was cut high over my ear, but the other side was close to my chin – can we say 80’s???

  8. Edgar Danmer says:

    Very funny. Love the title of the post. Got my attention. I do like the mischief in your writing.

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