Surprise Party!

Have you ever been thrown a surprise party?

The year was 1990.  The place was Carlisle Barracks, PA.  It was my 12th birthday.  I suspected nothing ahead of time.  I was invited to a slumber party with some friends.  I was riding with my friend Nicole and her mom on our way to the slumber party.  Nicole's mom said we needed to stop by Nicole's grandmother's house for a quick moment.  We stopped by the house, parked out front.  I waited in the car while Nicole ran inside for something.  After several moments, Nicole's mom asked me to go check on Nicole and see what was taking her so long.  "No problem!" I said.  And naively off I went to the house I'd never been to belonging to someone I'd never met.  In retrospect, I could've been set up to DIE, but thankfully that was not the case.  I don't remember how the surprise part actually went down, like who let me in the door?  What I do remember is walking in and several friends jumping out and yelling SURPRISE!!  Fun times!  I'm sure we did girly things like watch Dirty Dancing and play the board game "Girl Talk".

Fast forward one year.  1991.  13th birthday.  Seoul, Korea.  Again, I suspected nothing prior to the party.  I came home from a babysitting job to a group of friends at my house who surprised me.  My mom organized this shin-dig.  She went so far as to coordinate a FAKE babysitting job for me so I would be out of the house prior to all the guests arriving.  I should've guessed something was up when I arrived at the babysitting house, the mom stared at me blankly for a moment.  She forgot I was coming over for her to babysit so she could run some errands.  Understandable, since my mom had set this up. When I got home to my house, the back door I usually came in through was locked (I had no key) so I had to walk around the house to the front door.  This was all part of the party organizer's (Ma!) plan so I would be maximally surprised by the friends hiding behind the living room furniture.  Mom had a list of pictures we had to take for the evening with my POLAROID camera.  Aw yeah...polaroid...  One of the pictures was of all of us under a table.  I'm sure we giggled our way through it like 13 year olds would. :)

I'm pretty sure I was surprised again for my 14th birthday, because I remember saying "Wow! Three years in a row!  I'm really, really gullible!"  Alas, I don't have any specific memories of my 14th birthday or the surprise it included.  My complete non-memory of it all must mean I got ridiculously drunk.  JUST KIDDING.  I didn't drink at age 14.  Promise. :)

How about you?  Have you ever had a surprise party thrown for you?  Did it work?  Were you surprised?