My granddaughter Talia recently visited her sister Mira in Pittsburgh to celebrate her birthday. Talia and Mira’s boyfriend Yuri threw a very successful surprise party for the special birthday girl. Limos were rented, a private room was reserved on the terrace of a fancy new bar and lounge in the city, and the treatment was VIP. Mira says it was everything she could have hoped for and more since it was all a surprise. If you hadn’t already guessed it, this isn’t really a “how to” on throwing a party, or a surprise party, or even a surprising party. It’s just a little story about my granddaughter’s 21st birthday.
Giving someone a surprise party reminded me of the one and only time I tried to give such a party. It was for my husband’s 65th birthday. I had arranged for my three daughters to come to Chicago and be here for the surprise. They arrived several days before his birthday and he knew they had come just to celebrate with our immediate family. What he didn’t know was that I had invited a lot of other people to come, too. For some reason I didn’t think that he would wonder why I was baking a large quantity of pastries and cooking a very large amount of food for our little group.
On the day before his birthday I had asked a friend of his to invite him to listen to music at his home. It happened that this friend picked him up and would also have to bring him home because our house was about a half hour drive away. While they were listening to music all of the invited guests came to our house and waited for his return so they could shout “surprise” when he entered the house. All went according to plan except for one thing. When the surprise occurred, my husband was not really surprised because he had figured out that there would be no reason for me to cook as much food as I did unless I had some other plan in mind. Of course, he didn’t mention the fact that he was not surprised until afterwards.
So, this leads me to wonder how many people who are given surprise parties really know ahead of time what’s going on.
