I've only been able to pull this off twice in our lives together.
EVENT #1: THE TWELVE DAYS OF MARRIAGE
Before we were married I surprised her with the 12 Days of Marriage. Every day in the 12 days leading up to our wedding day, I surprised her with a new gift...
Day 1: A rose.Day 2: Two bottles of wine.
Day 3: Three words (I love you balloon)
Day 4: Four corners of the Earth (a small globe)
Day 5: Five points of a star (Star earrings)
Day 6: A six pack of beer (it's Dea, after all)
Day 7: The seven seas (a ship in a bottle)
Day 8: Eight baths (scented candles, soaps, etc. for relaxation)
Day 9: Nine Months (a baby doll to represent the nine months of pregnancy for our future children)
Day 10: Ten months (a calendar, we had been dating 10 months)
Day 11: My headshot (because, let's face it, I'm better than a 10)
Day 12: A dozen roses.
Each day she waited with anticipation at what she would receive next. It was romantic and brilliant.
It's was a once in a lifetime moment of inspiration.
It also set the bar unrealistically high.
EVENT #2: 30th BIRTHDAY PARTY
As my wife's 30th birthday rolled around, I was feeling the pressure. She had offered not too subtle hints that she wanted something special. However, her psychic ability would thwart my plans.
For example, one day I was sitting next to her on the couch and I said "I know what I'll do for your birthday." She looked over to me and said "I don't want to go to New York."
That's exactly what I was thinking! A surprise trip to New York City! How did she know that?!?
So, I had to come up with something more complex. A surprise birthday party would be good, but how would I get her to lower her psychic abilities long enough for me to pull it off?
I enlisted some accomplices. I had just started working at my current employer on the IT Helpdesk. My boss was a woman named Lia. Lia had moved down from Philadelphia and was new to the area, so Dea was helping out by being a nanny to Lia's kids.
I told Lia to tell my wife that there may be a chance that I'd have to go to our plant in Penang, Malaysia on business around her birthday. Why Malaysia? Because it takes 18 hours to get there and if my wife thought I was on a flight she would know I would not be available for almost a complete day. This was before cell phones and it would allow me to implement my surprise party without her expecting me to call in and thereby allow her psychic powers to uncover my plans.
I also had our travel department write up a fake flight itinerary, which I showed her, explaining my departure times, arrival times, hotel, etc.
When the time came I packed up my bags and had someone from work "take me to the airport" (his house). Unfortunately the house's air conditioning was on the fritz so I was stuck inside, sweltering. But it was worth it.
My in-laws took my wife out for dinner and I went home to prepare the party. Dea's sister drove down from Atlanta and her Aunt flew in from Las Vegas. Aunt Nancy had taken a picture of Dea's face, made copies of it, cut out holes around the eyes and put them on sticks so they could be used as masks. When Dea walked in the door she would see a wall of Dea's.
When she finally arrived she was completely taken by surprise. And walking into a room full of people sporting her face kinda freaked her out. Her panic quickly subsided when she saw her sister and Aunt. She squealed with excitement and tears rolled down her face.When I finally approached her she looked at me with glazed confusion. “What are you doing here?!?!” she asked, completely stumped.
“It’s a surprise party, isn’t it?” I replied. And she gave me a long, wonderful bear hug.
40th CONUNDRUM:
So, here I was, my wife's 40th birthday approaching and she subtly relays her expectations to me one day by saying “I want to be surprised. I want thought put into it.”
Okay, she’s Italian, not subtle.
I brainstormed with my kids… how do we surprise my psychic wife AGAIN? How do we buy her something she wants when she NEVER buys anything for herself? I don’t even know what she would buy if she allowed herself to indulge! The only thing we'd seen her buy was dish towels, pots, pans, and shampoo.
So, I took an alternate path. Instead of trying to surprise her, I just wouldn’t tell her what I was doing. I would tell her enough to fulfill her psychic impulses, but not enough to spill the details.
She knew we were having a small gathering of friends. She knew it was going to be at our house. But that was it.
The issue of what to buy ended up not being that difficult at first. I learned she had wanted an I-Touch for some time, so that was the high end gift. But, that wouldn’t really surprise her. So I went to Target and got a bunch of items, starting with a cheap plastic brush to wash dishes up to a new car stereo to replace the pathetic, French-made piece of Le’ Crap I had put in her car a few years before.
In all there were about 20 gifts.
But, how would I give them to her?
Turning 40 is a pretty traumatic event for a lot of people. My wife was no exception. For the weeks leading up to that fateful day her mood soured. She scowled and couldn’t believe her youth was quickly vanishing.
I tried to help out by adding phrases to the end of my sentences like "...because you're almost 40!" or "...that's probably because you're a lot older now."
She appreciated it. I could tell.
Playing on the "aging and you're old and really old and you should feel old because you're definitely old" thing, I decided to test Dea with a memory test. For each correct answer, she would get a gift.
I emailed a lot of friends and family and had them send me fond memories of events that they had shared with Dea. I’d read the event and if she could guess the author, she’d get the prize.
If she guessed wrong, she got pelted.
Being a big fan of the Japanese game show MXC, the kids and I crumpled up one of my old screenplays into a large waste basket full of paper balls (enter barb about the script being garbage worthy here).For every answer she got wrong, the attendees of the party would pelt her with paper.
I thought of getting squirt guns or something more messy, but I know my wife and if people were spraying water around the inside of her house, the evening would have ended with her in bloody handcuffs and my cold body resting in a shallow grave in the backyard.
All and all, the evening was a great success. Everyone had fun, I think. We shared snacks and wine and a delicious ice-cream cake. And hearing all of the fond memories of Dea gave a certain tenderness to the night’s events.
To Dea's credit, her 40 year old memory held up quite well! She got almost all of the memories correct! We were impressed.
Now I have to start thinking about her 50th birthday. If I work hard every day for the next 10 years, I may just be able to pull off something she doesn’t expect... maybe.I may have to book a fake flight to the Space Station, but I've got time to doctor the paperwork.
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