Magnificently Duped

For the one or two of you who weren't at the party on Saturday, a bunch of friends threw me and my friend Corey (whose birthday was on the 3rd) a surprise birthday party on Saturday. The party itself was beyond amazing and probably makes the list of the Top 5 Best Days of My Life, but the surprise alone was fiendishly brilliant and deserves its own post.

The organization, as I understand it, was this: our friends decided to throw Cory and I a shared surprise birthday party. Our good friend William Hines put it all together and decided to play us off each other. I don't know how the plan came together exactly, but Will had to send out three email invites. One to everyone but me saying there's a party for me, another to everyone but Corey saying there's a party for Corey, and a third to everyone but me and Corey saying the party's actually for the both of us.

My favorite part of the surprise was the distraction and delivery to the party. Will, Corey, and I usually get together every Sunday morning, but Will had to reschedule that meeting to Saturday late afternoon to get us in good position for the party. He emailed both Corey and I (separately) saying that two of us would be distracting the other and then bringing that third person to their party, but he'd come up with a lie justify the rescheduling. Knowing that he could say whatever he wanted and we'd both have to agree with it, Will told us that his Grandma Gypsy would be in town for her regional senior's bowling tournament on Sunday morning. The following email conversation ensued:

BEN (to all): While I doubt that your Grandma could have made the community bowling team (I've seen her bowl, and she's no Jake Huggins), I'm up for the change.
WILL (also to all): Watch what you say about my grandma. She was rolling turkeys while Jake Huggins was still bowling with bumpers, in his diapers!
BEN (just to Will): Beautiful. This is too good.
WILL (just to me): I know! The poor bastard has no idea!

Little did I know that I was the poor bastard.

I really wish I was omnipotent during our meeting on Saturday because I would have loved to see Will playing Corey like he was playing me. And I wish I knew what Corey was thinking that whole time. One time when Corey left the room, Will pointed after him and snickered silently, and I'm sure he must have done the same when I left the room. How you kept a straight face through those two hours, Will, I have no idea.

When the time came to leave, I got a call from Sarah (who, I should add, had been playing me just as well as--if not better than--Will for the past few weeks) saying, as we had discussed, that she and Emily just bought a shelf at Ikea and needed help putting it together. I had approved this excuse earlier, thinking Corey would see it as an adequate reason to go to Sarah's house. It worked, but not because Corey was convinced he'd be building a shelf. This part, the part where Corey and I were really playing off each other, is where I really wish I could have been in Will's head. I wonder what he thought when I was convincing Corey not to eat before we left, as we all certainly knew there would be food at the party, but neither Corey not I knew that the other knew it. It's more fun in my mind than it is to read about, though, so I'm sorry.

The arrival was the only awkward part of the night. We got onto Sarah's street, which was full of cars from all the guests--I totally thought that would give it away to Corey, but he didn't even mention it. I also wonder if they planned to save a parking spot for me, because for all the cars, there was still one spot relatively close. We walked up to the house, and I opened the door wide for Corey, but he wouldn't go in, and he probably wondered why I wouldn't go in. Of course, we could both see everyone crouched in the dark, but we didn't know it was partly for us too. Then Will shoved us both in, and we were both very confused until everyone shouted both our names. Corey apparently thought the party was ruined when he was pushed in with me. Oh, what fools we were.