PassiveAggressiveNotes.com » birthday

Daddy dearest

Kerry — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:56:53 +0000

Writes Virginia in Sumner, Washington: “Going through a box of old photographs in the attic, I found this birthday card I gave my father when I was five or six. I was a terrible child.”

related: Some daughterly wisdom for Dad

Eat it; love it. Got it?

Kerry — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:50:45 +0000

According to our submitter, Jason and his cake-baking wife are newlyweds. So…I guess the honeymoon’s over?

extra credit: Bruce Bogtrotter’s chocolate cake

Congratulations! At some point in time, through no effort of your own, you were born.

Kerry — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:20:51 +0000

So, imma let you in on a little secret: nobody has any reason to give a shit about your birthday. If you’re over the age of, say, 12, and still expect people to fete your very existence every year, you should also expect to be disappointed. (Yes, I’m the Grinch of birthdays. And don’t even get me started on “birthday weeks.”)

That said, in this case our submitter actually did call her mother on the day of her birth. When Mom didn’t pick up, quick-thinking daughter left her a message. After that, our submitter says, her mother didn’t return her calls for several days — until phoning to say, “Check your e-mail.” While still on the line, our submitter did just that — and found this lovely e-card.

extra credit: Half birthdays are the new black [stfuparents]

More proof that Facebook is turning us all into narcissists

Kerry — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:23:52 +0000

Writes our submitter: “Last year Zaky changed the date of his birthday on Facebook just to test if anyone actually knew his real birthday. Nobody did, probably because he pulls crappy mind games like this. He did it again this year and it still didn’t work.”

I think Melissa (below) probably said it best: “Whatever, Zaky, as if anyone actually cares when your birthday is?”

Grandpas can guilt-trip, too!

Kerry — Thu, 19 May 2011 17:05:31 +0000

Dara’s birthday is coming up, and her grandpa sent her this card. (Explains Dara: “He calls birthdays ‘anniversaries’ because ‘you only have one birth day.’) Nice, huh? And we haven’t even gotten to the guilt-trippy part yet.

“He lives in Florida and I live in upstate New York.” Dara says. “I went to visit my parents in NYC a few weeks ago and he chose to visit them the day after I left. Somehow that’s my fault.”

A different sort of Dear John letter

Kerry — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:19:19 +0000

Leslie in Wilmington, North Carolina says her baby sister has “always been pretty intense.” To wit: while going through some old papers recently, she dug up this card, which her then-10-year-old sister sent to Leslie’s boyfriend at the time.

(I’d like to think that beneath that thin layer of Liquid Paper lies an even more specific accusation, but baby sis’ decided that a more veiled threat would be the best way to scare Jon straight.)

related: Let the rest of us eat cake.

Happy birthday dear what’s-his-face

Kerry — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:38:18 +0000

Jo in Australia received this message from an ex-boyfriend via the dating site OKCupid. “This was where we met, so I guess he was trying to be poignant,” Jo says. “For obvious reasons,” — a.k.a. THEY WERE BROKEN UP — “I neglected to call him on his birthday. This clearly brought up more deep-seated self-esteem issues.” Nothin’ sexier than that!

“Replying to him is out of the question,” Jo adds — “I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of words.” Instead, she took the passive-aggressive approach: submitting it to this site.

related: So glad we’re not together!

Facebook: enabling your Mom to embarrass you in new and increasingly far-reaching ways!

Kerry — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:34:58 +0000

Writes Natalie in Pennsylvania: “My mother (who is unfortunately on Facebook) noticed that some of my extended family had wished my twin sister happy birthday but not me.”

Although Natalie herself couldn’t care less, her mother — “a master of both e-mail networking and Jewish guilt”— took it upon herself to write this e-mail and send it out everyone in the entire family. “And I mean EVERYONE,” Natalie says — “my cousins in Mexico got it!” [Face palm]

(If you can’t decipher the hideous font, mouse over the image for a translation.)

(What would Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield do? Find out in Sweet Valley High #144: Relative Intentions!)

Stone cold crazy like a fox

Kerry — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:05:46 +0000

For her 28th birthday, Jennifer in Arizona received this thoughtful card from her mother-in-law (who apparently comes from the same school of gift-giving as my own Grandma Cookie). “Since April I’ve lost 15 pounds,” Jennifer explains. “Apparently she’s concerned that I’ll gain it back.”

It’s my pity party, and I’ll whine if I want to

Kerry — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:24:37 +0000

If I had to choose the one thing I hate most about Facebook, I think it would have to be how it’s normalized the narcissistic idea that the day you were born (and increasingly the entire week/month leading up to it) is somehow an annual event of earth-shattering importance…and (part two), how it has turned into a venue for people who share that idea to host their own pity parties, like so:

Of course, some of those people prefer the prematurely pissy approach — this message, for example, was apparently posted at 10:50 the day before her birthday:

But on Facebook, the “proactively setting the bar low” approach (as opposed to proactively setting the bar high) might yield better results…that is, if your friends still pity you enough to put with your juvenile bullshit.

Maybe it was the “Bring your own Sprite” part that turned people off?

Kerry — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:51 +0000

Our submitter in Provo, Utah came across this sad little display taped to a door at Brigham Young University. “There’s a lot of pent-up, childish anger there,” she says.

Perhaps those would-be party-throwers in Provo could find some consolation from Ricky in Buenos Aires — his 49th birthday party was also cancelled due to a lack of cooperación from his amigos. (Hello, mission trip?)

Let the rest of us eat cake.

Kerry — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:45:41 +0000

“My roommate in college was allergic to everything,” says Casey in Watsonville, California — and she talked about it ad nauseam. “For her birthday sophomore year, we went to buy her a cake but of course she was allergic to everything good. So in the end, I just got a cake I liked and we bought her some crappy vegan thing that wouldn’t make her break out.”

(The cake, Casey says, was “delicious.”)

extra credit: CakeWrecks.com

Waiting for the rapture (and/or a thank you note)

Kerry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:59:00 +0000

Writes Ben in Snohomish, Washington: “We visit my aunt the same amount we visit the rest of our extended family, but for some reason she takes it personally that we don’t do so daily. She took the occasion of my son’s 11th birthday to take a shot at us.”

Aunt Myrtle was always ahead of her time

Kerry — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:52:02 +0000

Caitlin was browsing in an antique store in Waco, Texas when she ran across this gem dated April 4, 1910. So if you’ve ever heard someone blame passive-aggressive birthday badgering on this new-fangled facetweet technology…well, you might want to refer them to Vera.