I think surprises are only entertaining when you're the one doing the surprising. It's incredibly disorienting for the person being surprised. You know, deception under the guise of fun.
Let me back up. I mean, I have never completely understood the point of a surprise party. It's only a surprise party for the surprisee for about five seconds. After that, it's just a regular party. And that seems like an awful lot of work for less than ten seconds payoff. However, I suppose that the whole surprise "game" is fun for the people involved. But the surprise can get derailed in so many places that it's almost impossible to actually keep it a surprise. I'd really like to see data about what percentage of surprise parties are, in fact, surprises for the surprisee. "No, I really had no idea!" - riiiiight. In fact, surprise parties lead me to believe that the government must not be keeping big secrets like the JFK-assassination-and-september-11-
were-really-orchestrated-by-the-government, because seriously, if a group of people can't keep a simple party under wraps without accidentally blabbing details, how can people keep anything else secret?
Okay, so anyhow, maybe I've been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe the real point of the Surprise Party isn't really the surprisee. Maybe the point of the surprise is for the surprisers to have some fun. The surprisee's reaction is secondary. And if that's the case, then maybe I'm okay with surprise parties after all. Because if the surprisee's reaction is the primary motivation, there's a lot riding on that. Too much. But if it's really about the anticipation and planning for the guests, then maybe that's not so bad.
That is a nice segue into some notes I've made this week:
Let me back up. I mean, I have never completely understood the point of a surprise party. It's only a surprise party for the surprisee for about five seconds. After that, it's just a regular party. And that seems like an awful lot of work for less than ten seconds payoff. However, I suppose that the whole surprise "game" is fun for the people involved. But the surprise can get derailed in so many places that it's almost impossible to actually keep it a surprise. I'd really like to see data about what percentage of surprise parties are, in fact, surprises for the surprisee. "No, I really had no idea!" - riiiiight. In fact, surprise parties lead me to believe that the government must not be keeping big secrets like the JFK-assassination-and-september-11-
were-really-orchestrated-by-the-government, because seriously, if a group of people can't keep a simple party under wraps without accidentally blabbing details, how can people keep anything else secret?
Okay, so anyhow, maybe I've been thinking about this all wrong. Maybe the real point of the Surprise Party isn't really the surprisee. Maybe the point of the surprise is for the surprisers to have some fun. The surprisee's reaction is secondary. And if that's the case, then maybe I'm okay with surprise parties after all. Because if the surprisee's reaction is the primary motivation, there's a lot riding on that. Too much. But if it's really about the anticipation and planning for the guests, then maybe that's not so bad.
That is a nice segue into some notes I've made this week:
"I love the ideas of things more than the things themselves. Or the anticipation of an event more than I enjoy the event. I see the potential in people - perhaps more than I see the people themselves. Hence my frustrations when people, events, situations do not live up to my extraordinarily high expectations. Or is it just that they are simply different from my expectations? That they neither exceed nor fall short of my expectations - they're just different. And in so doing, I guess I don't really think of this as a negative thing. Because my anticipation of things and my expectations of people always always remain remarkably high.
Is this a terminal case of idealism?"
No comments:
Post a Comment