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.

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

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

“My friends’ mom has four cigarette-smoking daughters under one roof,” says our submitter in Cleveland. “She had to reach her breaking point eventually.”

related: Love, the Landlord

“My friend and her mother have little exchanges like this via Facebook all the time,” says our anonymous submitter. “It’s always lovely to get these little peeks into their relationship.”

related: Best wishes, godless heathens!

Joy‘s mother is the type who says things like, ”Joy! CLEAVAGE is not going to get you a JOB!” In one her more subtle moves, Joy says, “My mom clipped this ‘article’ out of her favorite nutjob newsletter and mailed it to me —with annotations to be sure I didn’t miss the point.”

Thanks for the new role model, Mom! Because, as everyone knows, Michelle Pfeiffer’s career has been propelled more than anything else by her “prudishness.”

related: Grandma’s advice: Be more like Bieber.

Jill from Baltimore is in her early 30s now, so she has enough distance from her childhood self to laugh at the passive-aggressiveness of this Mother’s Day card she made when she 11 or 12. “I love that I used Mother’s Day as an opportunity to not only tell my mom how great she is, but also to not-so-subtly point out her shortcomings.”

(If you were wondering about the “NA,” Dad did the cooking.)

related: Happy F’ing Mother’s Day!

“First off,” writes submitter, who we’ll call Lorelai, “my parents and I have never, ever, ever had any kind of discussion regarding ANYTHING having to do with sex. Mostly because, well, they are my 60-something-year-old parents. And my father is my preacher.”

Today, Lorelai is a 33-year-old “volleyball-coaching, home-owning, full-time working, Girl-Scout-Troop-leading” mother of a “well-behaved, smart, friendly, athletic, violin-playing” daughter, who happens to be the product of unplanned pregnancy 11 years ago.

“Although it took my parents some time to accept the decision I made to raise her (successfully, so far!) on my own, I thought we had moved on,” our submitter says. “Apparently not. My long-distance, very serious, boyfriend will be visiting in a few days, and I guess they wanted to make their stance clear on the matter, eleven years later.”

Lorelai says the follow-up letter from her Mom clarifying to meaning of the card was even more awkward. Sample excerpt:

I guess our gesture was our way of saying ‘We love you and want you to have a healthy sex life, but be careful, because we don’t want you to be hurt like you were before.’

Adds Lorelai: “Maybe some people have this kind of relationship with their parents, but, well, I definitely don’t.”

related: Happy Valentine’s Day to my son…and the harlot with whom he’s living in sin.

DeeAnne recently received this postcard from her mother, who’s vacationing in Hawaii. “After regaling me with the usual tales of beautiful scenery and exotic fauna,” says DeeAnne, “she reminded me that if only I would succumb to her 10,000th ‘hint’ to accept her friend request on Facebook — note the double underline — I too would be able to glimpse paradise.”

And yet, “as you can see, she’s forgiving enough that she’s still willing to show them to me upon her return.” (Phew.)

related: This is what happens when parents use Facebook

extra credit: Saturday Night Live, “Mom’s on Facebook”

Katie doesn’t remember writing this note (which she found while going through old papers of her mom’s) but says, “I do feel sorry for little 11-year-old me, having to deal with being falsely accused of *gasp* faking illness to get out of school, and then having to deal with the humiliation of public grandma affection.”

Adds Katie: “My favorite part is at the beginning where I unintentionally implied that my mother was some kind of slut. (At the time, she worked around a lot of truckers and always had funny stories about them trying to hit on her.) Also, you can totally tell that we had worked on letter-writing/dialogue skills in school recently.”

related: A thinly veiled tattletale

extra credit: “I Enjoy Being a Girl, Sort of” [This American Life]

So, the other day, Olivia’s mother and aunt were having a conversation, and her Mom was fretting about how she’d been overeating this week and how she was going back on her diet the very next day and blahblahblahwhydon’tgrown-upsevertalkaboutanythinginteresting.

Olivia says this inspired her eavesdropping 7-year-old sister to post this helpful reminder where their Mom gets ready in the morning, just to make sure she wouldn’t forget!

related: Please don’t take this the wrong way, pregnant lady, but have you considered Weight Watchers?