Flash back seven or eight years – my wife’s family was setting up yet another surprise birthday party for a relative, and my wife informed me that one day it would be my turn to be surprised.
No way, no how, I’ll totally be on to you the entire time, yadda yadda yadda.
Sunday, February 7th, I turned 42. We had spend the week beforehand packing up our house to move, and made the actual move that Friday. We had a metric buttload of things to unpack and rearrange, and part of my genius plan was to host a small Super Bowl party on Sunday as well. Naturally, I was a little distracted.
But, I knew we’d get things all set eventually. Sure, we had some things that would cut into valuable house-arranging time – stuff like work, oh, and that Valentine’s Day dance over at the First Aid station that a lot of my family will be attending on Saturday night, the 13th. Ah yeah…that’ll be nice – The Littlest Briston will be pawned off on family, and I’ll be able to go out on an actual date with my lovely wife (who would certainly never conspire against me behind my back).
Saturday evening arrives, and I get dressed up as well as I can in a feeble attempt to match how damn good my wife looked in that slinky red dress of hers. We pick up her parents and head over to the hall, and as we’re walking up to the building, a thought comes to my mind:
“Man, we’ve thrown a lot of surprise parties here.”
You’d think a connection might’ve been made, but no. We were nearly a week past my birthday, we’d already had a small party on Super Bowl Sunday, and besides – when was she going to find the time to put together a surprise party when we’ve had so much going on in our lives recently? No way is this a surprise party. We walked into the ballroom to face a gamut of cameras and my immediate thought was “Well waddaya know, it is a surprise party! Huh…I wonder who they’re throwing it f…oh, wait, it’s me, isn’t it”.
<Sigh>…well done, dear wife – I was caught completely unawares. An excellent evening, of course – in keeping with it being my 42nd, she put a very nice Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy theme on much of it (the tiny yellow candy fish were a very nice touch). Friends and family from all over – most impressive was former doper nocturnal_tick flying over from England just for the party(!).
So, yeah…I got got. And I now know that my wife is completely capable of spending 18 months planning out an operation completely behind my back.
Mark my words…she’ll get hers. Oh yes…she will.
She even threw it at their house, and used the time delay for extra surprise and to put the celebration into spring weather, so they could use their deck. It helps that he’s such a fit guy and so into physical activity that he thought nothing of doing a 5K charity run and then playing tennis with a friend (who was in on the secret) right after, so she had most of the morning to prep and get us all there. People came in from out of town and we all got there and ready to surprise him when he showed up.