Surprise! New dolls for Christmas!!! | Surprise! Those handfuls of sand you just ate will give you diaper rash for a week!!! |
In fact I think I'm most bipolar when it comes to my take on surprises.
Making a surprise face at a baby? Sure thing.
Getting a surprise increase in your cable bill? I could do without that.
Finding a nice surprise to the tune of a 20 dolla bill in an old purse? Commence dancing sequence.
Having a bird surprise you as they fly directly into your car window? Not my cup of tea.
Oh and loud sneezes? This is an example of a surprise I don't mind hearing but am not a fan of actually doing...loud sneezes are usually painful for the sneez-ie, we don't do them for the "wooooooah your sneeze scared the beejezus outta me" comments. Trust me.
Here's the thing. I am all about adventuring. And part of the joys of adventures are the little treasures that surprise you along the way!
You've got the glorious one-hit wonders you forgot you knew from the mix CD you forgot you had, to the hilariously inappropriate card you find at the all-but-abandoned gas station, to the random sign you find in the middle of nowhere and the "hey, that'll look cool on Instagram" that inevitably follows, all the way to the "oh shooooot I spilled orange soda on my white shorts...guess I'll have to buy those tacky 'Bubba Gump' restaurant gift store shorts for 40 bucks".
All those surprises? I will GLADLY take them all. Bring 'em on!
The type of surprises I try to skillfully avoid (which always makes things soooo much worse) are the kind I can't really prepare for. I can't really handle when things come out of nowhere and I have to deal with them immediately- except when it comes to work related things!!! Potential employers, I promise I can handle any task you throw at me (unless you want me to speak Spanish....that's just not going to happen). But I'm more talking about surprises in social situations...
Like #36 on this list or when "yes ma'am" somehow comes out of my mouth while I'm talking to someone my own age. In California. It's those little surprises that get me. I try to keep those to a minimum.
But usually when someone says something unexpected to me I get flustered, which means I start rambling, which means I always finish the conversation asking myself, how did we get from the musical styling of Johnny Cash to admitting to a relative stranger that I used to eat playdough as a kid?
One time when an old family friend (and by that I mean I recognize him from the yearly Christmas card but actually know nothing about my supposed bestie from years 1-3) SURPRISE visited me at college, I had to try and convince him my school was cool and convince his mother it would be safe enough for her baby boy.
I ended up telling them about the crazy guy who likes to stand in front of chapel yelling at all the students that they are going to burn in Hell, the fraternity that got kicked off campus for all their crazy alcohol party tomfoolery, that we call the local grocery store "Ghetto HEB" because it's super sketchy (well was, RIP Ghetto HEB), and that we have a cannibal, yes a cannibal, roaming around our town... Job well done, wouldn't you say?
I DON'T DO WELL WITH SURPRISES PEOPLE.
But I can't help but love (most) of them.
All I'm sayin' is if you ask me a question I wasn't expecting to hear, there is a good chance I will end up talking about the time an old Chinese man fell asleep on me on the subway.
You're welcome.
Also, I am still not over the surprise that TLC's 1995 classic "Chasing Waterfalls" is not actually a love ballad to all the Jason Waterfalls out there. I was rootin' for y'all. Not cool TLC, not cool.