WILLOW GROVE, Pa \u2014 A Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, teenager was filled with joy over the weekend as dozens of people showed up to his birthday party after a public plea.<\/p>\n
Last week, Kareem and his mother Mary Ann shared their story with CBS Philadelphia ahead of his birthday party, hoping the community might help him feel less alone.<\/p>\n
For Kareem, a birthday party meant more than cake and candles. It was a chance to meet new people and make friends.<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old Willow Grove teenager is outgoing, loves to dance and is a junior black belt. He also works as a greeter at a local Chick-fil-A. But his mother, Mary Ann, said making close friendships has been difficult.<\/p>\n
When she asked who he wanted to invite to his birthday party, she said, Kareem’s first question was, “Who’s coming?”<\/p>\n
“And literally, there isn’t one friend on the list,” she recalled.<\/p>\n
However, after that story aired, Kareem celebrated his belated birthday surrounded by people who came to share the day with him.<\/p>\n
For his family, the celebration was a reminder that a small act of kindness\u2014showing up, saying hello or offering friendship\u2014can mean a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILLOW GROVE, Pa \u2014 A Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, teenager was filled with joy over the weekend as dozens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2593,2592,2595,2594,296,139,28,30,29,2597,2598,726,2596,1704,2599,1133],"class_list":["post-316565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}