Different people have different ideas of how they want to celebrate their birthday, but what’s true for most people is that they’d want to do something special to mark the occasion. It could be a party, a dinner, or enjoying a favorite activity, but ignoring the day and pretending like it’s not special isn’t all that common.

In this story, one young man hasn’t celebrated his birthday in almost a decade, and when his friend’s parents find out, they try to throw a spontaneous birthday party for him. He refuses to attend, and now he’s wondering if that was a mistake.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for turning down a chance to celebrate my birthday

I a 21M as i am writing this post today is my birthday.

I don’t make a big deal about birthdays since i was 12 after a terrible experience on my 12th birthday which was not so great on every level.

Since i was 12 no birthday celebrations and my family was okay with that decision of mine as they were also not so keen on birthdays after i turned 11.

Instead of celebrating, he was studying.

Today i went to my friend’s house, lets call him Sam to study for tomorrow’s semester exam along with another friend and lets call him Yann.

We were studying for the exam and i told friend a friend to take my phone and open a chat to get the last exam question paper for reference and he saw that it was my birthday in that chat

That chat was of a classmate who remembers by birthday since we are only a few days apart in terms of the birthday.

Sam saw it and asked me if it was my birthday and i said yes.

Sam announced OP’s birthday to the world.

He immediately created an instagram story with a bunch of photos and posted that it was my birthday while i insisted that i don’t want him to do that.

Yann joined in on it and reposted Sam’s story.

The wishes started to come in and i replied it to them and we studied for a couple of hours.

It’s nice that his friends want to celebrate with him.

Then they planned a day out after the next day’s exam regarding my birthday.

And i reluctantly agreed and though im just hanging out with friends and it ain’t a big deal.

We studied for a few more hours and Yann and I left.

While leaving i told Sam’s mom that i have not celebrated my birthday since i was 12 as she asked me what i was doing studying today and not celebrating my birthday.

Sam’s parents sound so sweet.

When Yann dropped me off at my house, Sam called Yann and said to return to his house to celebrate my birthday because Sam’s dad bought a cake for me to cut and share with everyone.

I told him that it isn’t necessary as i don’t celebrate birthdays anymore and Yann needs to get home himself and can’t drive me around for celebrating a birthday.

Sam said they can’t do anything with the cake as it has my name and birthday wishes.

But he still refused.

I said simply wipe it off and eat it as a family and apologize to Sam’s dad for me and hung up the call after he said that its fine.

Yann said it is common courtesy to show up since Sam’s dad bought me a cake.

And i disagreed saying i didn’t want any of it since morning, they instagram story, tomorrow’s meet up and today’s cake.

AITA for turning down the chance to celebrate my birthday.

I wonder what happened on his 12th birthday that made him so against the idea of celebrating his birthday. Sam and his parents were obviously trying to be nice. I hope they didn’t get their feelings hurt when he didn’t return for the cake.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Your friends can’t force you to celebrate your birthday.

This person doesn’t want anyone to know when their birthday is either.

He should’ve warned his friends.

Another person doesn’t treat their birthday as a special day either.

Birthdays aren’t special for everyone.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.