Would this be a friendly gesture or insufferably smug?

[UsedtobeFeckless]

Right ... It's my birthday in a couple of weeks and I'm going out for a meal with my family and a few mates ... I'd like to invite another friend ( Call her Enid ) She knows everyone who'll be there and is a pretty outgoing person - trouble is she was really, really upset a few months ago when it was her birthday and her kids and sister forgot and her boyfriend took her at her word when she said she didn't want a fuss and didn't make one ... The resulting apocalyptic row rumbled on for weeks and is still a thoroughly sore point.

I'd like Enid to come but I don't want her to think I'm doing a Hey-look-everyone-remembered-MY-birthday type one-upmanship thing ... ( If I hadn't sorted out my own get together it wouldn't have happened! )

So - am I being paranoid? What would you lot do?

Invite her.

Love the name Enid.

Just realized Enid is Dine backwards.

Its a sign, OP!

I had a similar thing with a big birthday once where I said I didn't want to do anything special.

What I imagined was, that as it was a big birthday, I'd get a tiny bit more fuss than my usual birthday, eg slightly better present from people who usually get me a present, cards with the number on etc. And that tiny bit of extra fuss was all I wanted. But as I wasn't doing anything special, everyone "forgot" that it was a special birthday. So it was like any other. I was very sad about not getting the tiny extra bit of fuss which was all I wanted. If I thrown a party for myself I know I would have got a massive fuss. But I didn't want a massive fuss, I wanted a tiny one. I don't know how to achieve a tiny one!

My Mum remembered that it had been a special birthday about three months later and was mortified. Good!

So I think Enid INBU.

To answer your question - If someone had invited me to their do like you are thinking of I wouldn't have felt they were being smug at all!

Yeah you are worrying over nothing.