A Son’s Birthday vs. A Bestselling Book Release: A Mother’s Lifelong Grudge
Ah, Reddit, where the raw, unfiltered, and sometimes downright bizarre stories come to life. This time, it’s a real doozy, and boy, does it feature some prime parental drama! Hold onto your hats, ladies and gents, because Roger’s about to dive into a tale of maternal pettiness so grandiose it’ll make you question humanity—or at least your next book preorder. Based on a genuine Reddit post, this isn’t just another tale of a misunderstood middle child. Welcome to the bizarre world of a mother who holds a lifelong grudge against her son—for being born on the wrong day. Oh, the audacity!
Our protagonist, a 21-year-old male, takes center stage in this familial soap opera. Imagine being the middle child of five, literally sandwiched between siblings, and then having the whole ‘you-were-born-on-the-wrong-day’ baggage airdropped onto you by your own mother. The twist? His unholy crime was being born on the release day of a book she was dying to read. Yup, you read that right. All because he dared to enter the world and foil her literary escapade. Shakespearean tragedy, meet 21st-century absurdity!
Long story short—too late, I know—the strain between them was so intense that it shattered his parents’ marriage. Daddy dearest, bless his soul, drew the line at mom’s blatant favoritism and her inexplicable frostiness towards our dear storyteller. Apparently, dad wasn’t about to let his wife channel her misplaced postpartum depression (or whatever that fiasco really was) solely onto their son.
As for our narrator, he’s spent his life under a cloud of maternal disdain while everyone else wondered what he’d done to deserve it. You could almost forgive the extended family’s ignorance, except it took 21 years and a holiday-filled showdown for some of them to realize the source of the dysfunction.
Picture this: a teenage showdown where emotions run high, and our storyteller finally confronts his mother. You’d think a cutthroat battle for the last piece of turkey or a remote control might set off such fireworks, but nope! This epic confrontation lays bare a mother’s grievance that’s gone worse than sour milk. She unloads: he had the audacity to be overdue, disrupt her anticipated reading bliss with labor, require a C-section, and here’s the kicker—he cried a lot around her as a baby. Like, how dare a newborn cry around their own mother, right? She even blamed him for driving a wedge between her and her husband from day one, repeating the absurd notion that he premeditated his birth to foil her grand plans and cause her untold misery.
If you’re waiting for the plot twist where he’s adopted or switched at birth, I’m sorry to disappoint. DNA tests confirmed, on a Maury Povich level of certainty, that he was indeed his father’s son. So much for the secret, scandalous second family theory. Through all this, the poor guy carried the burden of his mother’s misplaced rage like an unwanted badge of honor.
Fast-forward to Saturday at Grandma and Grandpa’s. You can just hear the ticking time bomb, can’t you? Because what’s a family gathering without some passive-aggressive comments and barely-concealed animosity? Our hero, fed up with the dirty looks and whispers behind his back, finally drops the bombshell in front of everyone. Ever seen a Thanksgiving turkey explode? This drama unfolded with comparable eagerness and messiness.
Most family members were gobsmacked, others downright disgusted. His mom, in true cinematic fashion, half-admits her crazed reasoning—more in anger than in clarity, mind you. But whether she owned up fully or not, the damage was done. The family now had fresh fuel for their gossip mills, and our protagonist was left debating if he was the hero or villain in his own story.
And here we are, folks, where our story ends and Roger’s unsought but fabulously pertinent opinions begin. So, what’s my take? Drumroll, please!
Roger’s Razor-sharp Rhetoric: The Final Verdict
Sonny-boy—our main man—is 100% NOT the asshole. Exposing your mom’s epic pettiness after years of emotional gaslighting isn’t just okay; it’s long overdue. Our birthdays are supposed to be our special day, not an annual reminder of mommy dearest’s twisted priorities. The woman had 21 years to read that damned book and get over herself. Surely, a little tantrum at a family gathering is small potatoes in comparison.
And to the familial busybodies out there: maybe redirect your finger-pointing and focus on who really caused this train wreck to begin with. Spoiler alert, it’s not the guy who was born wriggling into this world oblivious to his mother’s skewed grievances.
So to you, the heroic middle-child crusader, Roger raises a sassy toast: may you never apologize for matching your extraordinary life to anyone’s misguided expectations. Keep speaking your truth, and if mom ever gets over herself enough for a real relationship, I hope you can read a chapter of a brighter future together.
Until then, keep fighting the good fight, you marvelous, miraculous, book-release-crashing gem of a human being!
Original story
I’m (21m) the middle child of five siblings. And I always knew my mom treated me very differently from the rest of my siblings.
It caused my parents marriage to end because my dad made it very clear he wouldn’t tolerate her being so different with me. This was after he tried to figure out why she was so different with me.
A few close family knew and said it was PPD from when she had me, that apparently only affected her ability to bond with me and not any of my four siblings, just me, the middle kid. I have a sibling one year younger than me and she bonded with her just fine.
I was a teenager when I got into a fight with mom one day and she accused me of always hating her and never wanting her to be happy. I asked what the fuck she meant by that and she told me that I had to come on the one day she had other plans, that it was bad enough I was overdue when I was born, but I prevented her from reading a book that released that day that she’d made plans to read months in advance.
She told me I just had to be born that day so she was too tired to read it on the release day and she was weeks behind. She said I couldn’t even be born normally like my siblings and I was a c-section baby.
She told me it fucked her plans so bad and I never seemed to care. Then she mentioned how much I cried when she was around and how good I did with dad.
She said I made her seem like such a monster and none of my siblings were like that. She told me I clearly always wanted to come between her and dad.
She was pretty serious about it too. She said I started fucking her over the day I was born.
It really shocked me when she told me all this. At first I didn’t/didn’t want to believe it.
Dad and I even did a DNA test around that time because we were like, maybe she’s making up a dumb reason so we won’t know she cheated, but I’m definitely dad’s kid. DNA confirmed it.
My relationship with mom is as bad as the day I was born apparently and I get a hard time from some family friends and extended family members who see me not being close with my mom as me being shitty to her for no reason. They put the bad relationship on me and at my grandparents house on Saturday I got so tired of the comments and mom sneering at me the whole time, they I exposed what she said to me when I was a teenager and the blame she put on me being born the wrong day for our bad relationship.
Mom half admitted it because she got so angry she verbally lashed out at me. It created a shitshow and some family members think I made a big deal out of nothing but others were disgusted with mom.
I was told I was wrong to expose her like that. Mom told me I had no business doing that.
So I ask. AITA?