So I decided to return early to the homeland and not tell anyone - thus enabling myself to show unexpectedly on people's doorsteps (and yes - this did include my family except for my co-conspirators Rachel and Candace.)
Somethings I have learned:
- When you are preparing people to be surprised you must fill their mind with an expectation that is different than what is going to happen. I simply kept re-enforcing with people that my return was about 9 days later than I intended.
- You really can read every emotion on a person's face - especially your mother. Really that was the best thing: rachel was giving her a hug and said to her "I love you" - in the meantime I crept up behind her and said "I do too." Then rachel turned her around. Every emotion went across her face - and then she cried. Maybe I did too. My dad: I walked in the room when he got home from work. I saw the wheels in his head stop turning as he just stood and looked and me- and then slowly started turning again. He then also hugged me repeatedly. IT WAS GREAT!
- Having a big family is awesome - you get to surpise a lot of people.
- If you want to surprise people you need to enlist the help of 2-3 people who are creative and get excited. Thank you Gayle, Rachel, and Candace.
- It is very humbling to BE the surprise - you realize that you mean a lot to people.
- And I will let one of my friends describe her reaction in her own words:
http://www.jazzlilly.blogspot.com/ (Honestly, I might have surprised her just a little out of spite: because she says she can never be surprised.)
2 comments:
i didn't say never. i just said it was very hard, and few try as a result. but you and gayle very much succeeded.
Thus enabling this surprise to go down in the history books as being Particularly Good. :)
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