I have never had a surprise party either. Even those times when everyone was being real laid back and nonchalant about an upcoming opportunity to be festive. And I like being surprised too.
My wife surprised me with one for my 30th birthday. I totally had no clue. The pretense for getting e out of the house was totally plausible, and my birthday was actually about a week and a half away, so I wasn’t thinking about the possibility.
While I’ve had a number of “surprise” parties thrown for me over the years, I can only remember one time that I was genuinely surprised. (And I did not like it, as I had been looking forward to a quiet, restful evening after a stressful day at work - instead, my husband, who should have known better, had filled our house with noisy guests and unappetizing food he’d thrown together at the last second.)
If I sound like someone who doesn’t like surprise parties, that’s because I am. In fact, when I had a “surprise” baby shower, my mother told me about it in advance because she knew I wouldn’t take it well otherwise. Thanks to her tipping me off, I was prepared for the festivities and just pretended for the sake of the people throwing it that I was surprised. I had a much better time that way.
I had one when I was…I think 27? Anyway, I was working in a different city for a couple years after uni, and came back to Cape Town whenever I could, including my birthday. My (then)girlfriend(now wife) took me out for a fancy Chinese meal, we came into the restaurant, sat down, I barely glanced at the other tables, including a large one at the front. Then I turned to the menu, my tgnw was all “Hrm!Ahem!”. Thinking she was about to give me another pressie, I looked up, but she still had to explicitly point out that there was, in fact, a large table with all my friends at it, right in front of me. Needless to say, I was, indeed, quite surprised.
I think this thread has inspired me to conduct a payback mission for her next birthday…
Yup. It was in high school, and a school day. My mom invited over all my close friends, and they woke me up at 6:00 by gathering around my bed and singing “Happy Birthday.” Scared the crap out of me and then made me laugh. We trooped downstairs where Mom had made a huge batch of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. Huge surprise, great breakfast, and hella good friends to be willing to be up and at my house at that hour.
I was totally surprised that my best friend threw me a surprise party for my 18th b-day.
I didn’t hear about it until the next day.
You see, there was this girl…
Yep.
Senior year in college, I had been grumbling that since my birthday was in the summer, I never got to do the school-year birthday stuff - you know, cupcakes for the classroom when you’re a kid, getting wasted with your friends in college…
So Typo Knig arranged one for me. We were supposed to go out for a movie, and my roommates and I were running late with dinner so I tried suggesting we go to the later showing. Typo insisted on the earlier showing so we had to rush and I was annoyed.
Heading back to the apartment after the movie, we bumped into the former tenant, Linda (the person whose lease we had taken over, a month or two beforehand), heading to the apartment. I said to her “Oh, you must have stopped by to get your mail” (completely forgetting that she didn’t have any). Apparently, Typo was frantically waving and bobbing his head behind me, while Linda got the clue and said “uh sure, yeah!”. I was completely fooled.
Then while pregnant with Dweezil, I was working on a project in a sub-basement of a Federal building. We had a small conference room set aside in our area. Periodically, we would all get called into that room for a brief impromptu meeting to congratulate someone on making their 5 year anniversary with the company or something. This got to be pretty annoying. So one day we were called in, and I was grumbling to a co-worker as we walked to the room, about what the “Special Occasion” was this time.
The joke was on me, as I was the guest of honor at a surprise shower! :o
And I have to brag about a surprise we once pulled on a friend, who had just defended his doctoral dissertation. He and family had moved away from the college town we lived in, to start his new job, and he had to return for the dissertation defense.
A week or so before, we contacted the friend’s wife to see if she’d like to do a surprise party for him while they were in town. She thought it was a good idea, but we couldn’t figure out the logistics of getting him to our house at the appointed time.
When they got to town, it occurred to us that maybe they ought to go out to dinner somewhere NICE after the orals, to celebrate (for folks who know central NC, they went to Fearrington House). And since their 3 year old daughter was too young to enjoy such a place, we offered to babysit 
So - kid dropped off at our place, off to dinner, guests arrived… and back from dinner they came to fetch their kid.
(as an aside: this was shortly after there was a famous scholarly article in a major physics journal, on why the Brazil nut winds up on top when you have a can of mixed nuts. So we had a bunch of physics profs in our living room, playing with the munchies to demonstrate the principal).
Duh, they are trying to get in alphabetical order.
I’ve had two surprise birthday parties and wasn’t surprised by either. Although I was living/staying with the party hosters in both occasions so it may have been harder to hide than had it been at some other location. That said, I was still surprised by specific elements of the parties (who was invited, a special cake, etc.). I played along though and didn’t let on that I had suspicions.
The first I was staying with friends in another state for the summer. A neighbor made an excuse for me to hang out with her while the party preps were going on. What was cool is that the apartment neighbors showed up, as did the coworkers of my friend who I had gotten to know a bit, and they even brought gifts! And my friend baked a cake in the shape of a turtle I had drawn.
The second I was visiting my friend and his family in their original home in Honduras. They took me out to a waterfall for the day, and the relatives decorated the house and made me a cake for when I got back. While at the waterfall swimming, they formed a circle around me and sung happy birthday.
No, you’re not alone.
I’ve had two surprise parties, one for my 30th birthday, which was not a surprise but I pretended it was, and one for my 50th, which was a spectacular surprise.
For my 50th, my husband got a HUGE group of friends together at our little sailing club at the harbor where we keep our boat. He even got my sister from out of state to come. I had no bleeping idea, even when I saw, from down the dock, my sister ducking into the club. I did not recognize my own sister. I am completely clueless, and clearly easy to surprise.
It was a GREAT party, with a band and everything.