Note: this is the first of two parts in the Hot Dot Dot Dot series: Hot Air Balloons. While it can be consumed individually, it is best paired with its sister article, Hot A– W–. See below for details about accessing part two. Enjoy!
Do you like surprises?
Over and over in life, I have found the world to be a frustratingly nuanced place.
So when I ask “do you like surprises,” I’m resigned to the fact that the most accurate answer for the majority of people would be “well…it depends.”
So much for there being anything certain in this world.
Okay, let me be more specific: do you like pleasant surprises?
Of course you do! Who doesn’t?
Wait…what’s that?
Oh. That’s not a universal truth, either? Nuts.
Though far from perfect, I like to think that I can be a rather thoughtful guy on occasion. However, a keen sense of logic and a knack for overthinking things can at times lead one astray.
It’s true: it’s possible to be too thoughtful.
This seems to come into play most when it comes to deciding whether or not to attempt to “pleasantly surprise” the Boss Lady.
On one hand, there is often no greater joy than surprising a loved one so pleasantly that it moves them to happy tears. On the other hand…well, what could possibly go wrong?
Let me take you back to Valentine’s Day 2011. The Boss Lady and I were entering into our fourth year of being in a “business relationship,” and thanks to my zeal and romanticism, I was losing a war of attrition to myself when it came to celebratory occasions.
Have you ever had one of those frenemies1In case you aren’t familiar: friend + enemy = frenemy. It’s a portmanteau. that constantly has to one-up you, and, because of circumstances beyond your control, you’re forced to play their game so you don’t end up looking like the asshole? Yeah. It’s exhausting.
And in this case, I was my own worst frenemy.
While I loved tapping into my creative juices to make each romantic experience more memorable than the last, I would be inadvertently screwing over Future B.J. by setting the bar even more unrealistically high. It was not a tenable situation.
I should interject here that it was not that the Boss Lady was particularly demanding in this regard, mind you. It was more the case of my archetypical male overly-competitive nature getting out of hand.
The upshot of all this is that by time this particular Valentine’s Day rolled around, I was on the hunt for something extra special to prove to her (myself?) that I still had my mojo.
Now, I can’t remember if I saw a Groupon, or what it was in particular that had inspired me, but somehow I got the idea in my head that a hot-air balloon ride would be the perfect V-Day gift for My Beloved.
An even more perfect idea: make it a complete surprise.
Well, an almost complete surprise, as in I had to tell her I had a surprise for her, but it would be so surprising that she would be completely surprised once she found out what it was.
Like a “I’m so surprised that’s what the surprise was” kind of surprise, right?
Anyways, as my life per usual, setting up a ride for Valentine’s Day was more complicated than it should have been.
The first issue was that Jerry Seinfeld was coming to our town smack-dab in the middle of Valentine’s Day weekend. Since both my father-in-law and I are huge Seinfeld fans, the Boss Lady and I decided to treat the in-laws to a laugh-filled semi-romantic double date, and had purchased tickets as soon as they went on sale many moons earlier. The show was on a Saturday night, so if I was wanting to do the deed as close to V-Day as possible, that quickly narrowed it down to Friday evening or earlier in the day Saturday.
I was not deterred.
I soon found a guy named Jack a couple hours from us who had some availability in mid-February–perfect! However, I learned a fun fact about ballooning: as with rowing,2I was on the Kansas State men’s rowing team in college, if you were wondering why I was randomly bringing that analogy up. Just one of the many perks of having the calves of a lumberjack… you want to do it either first thing in the morning or at dusk because that is when the wind is the calmest. Jack wasn’t available to do it Friday evening, so Saturday at the butt-crack of dawn it was.
I convinced the Boss Lady to take that Friday off so we could enjoy a one-night romantic getaway at a cute little tobacco-barn-turned-vacation-cottage that I had found about 15 minute from Jack’s (see Figure 1). And of course I had to tell her I had surprise for her in the morning, otherwise she would have emphatically insisted on sleeping in.
Friday evening all went well, as much as one could hope an evening of fancy pasta, fondue, and wine might go. Then around 9 Jack started clandestinely texting me about the plans for the morning. They were mainly just about directions, etc., but he did caution that it was looking like it might be windier than expected, so we would have to play it by ear in the morning.
Ugh. I could barely sleep. Would my well-laid plans3I refuse to make any inappropriate puns here. Stop asking, because I simply won’t do it. This is a family blog after all. all come unravelling in the end?
At 6 a.m. he texts me and says we’re still on, and so I wrangle us up and out the door, only telling my lady friend to “dress warm.” She thinks we’re just doing something simple like hiking. How cute.
Around 6:45 we roll up to Jack’s place out in the country, and are greeted by a small gaggle of older men with grizzled beards and clad in cover-alls. I suspect that the dualing banjoes from Deliverance was playing in the Boss Lady’s head in that moment, as she clearly had a so-called WTF?!? look on her face as she tried to figure out exactly what type of surprise was in store for her.
Boss Lady: “Uh…Babe, are you sure we’re in the right place?”
Me: “Totally. Aren’t you excited?!?”
Boss Lady: “I’m kinda having a hard time deciding if I should be excited or nervous or sprinting into the woods in this moment…”
Me: “Ta-dah! …it’s a hot-air balloon ride!”
Boss Lady: …
Me: “Awesome, right?!?”
Boss Lady: “I’m don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for this…”
She related that while she would love to go for a hot-air balloon ride, this was just too much, too soon, and that she was feeling a little sick to the stomach.
Jack greeted us and introduced us to his crew, which turned out to be the roving gang of farmers he would always have coffee with down at the local cafe every morning. They were a friendly bunch, and that helped calm the Boss Lady’s nerves at least a wee little bit.
And then we waited, as Jack wasn’t fully convinced yet we should be going up.
What a poor thing, she was. The whole time the anticipation ate at her more and more.
Boss Lady: “Aaack! Why would you do this to me?!? I think I’m going to vomit.”
Me: “Dammit. Uh, Happy Valentine’s Day…?”
Fortunately for her, Jack finally delivered the news: we wouldn’t be able to go up that day. She was sooooooo relieved.
Of course, I was devastated. My plans that I worked so hard to make happen crumbled before my eyes. Now I was the one feeling sick.
The point of the story is:5Spoiler alert: this isn’t really the main point of this story. when it comes to romantic surprises, fellas, keep it simple. The more moving parts to your plan, the more likely something’s gonna get jammed in one of the cogs and blow it to smithereens.
You may think yourself clever, but, pssst! Come here, let me tell you a secret. No, come even closer.
[Whispering] “Clever” is most likely not the reason she’s with you. “Sensitive gentleman,” though, is a pretty good candidate.
Relationship tips aside, the story had a decent ending. Jack kindly promised that we would reschedule for another date, and he made good on that promise.
This actually worked out for the better, because, according to my Facebook research, it ended up happening on a late April evening as opposed to a ----- frigid February morning.
However, it wasn’t all fun and games. Another fun fact about ballooning: you really have no way to steer the ----- thing.
We learned this the “hand’s on” way: the instant we lifted off the ground, a rogue burst of air sent us in the opposite direction we had expected to go, and right towards the fairly large evergreen tree in Jack’s yard.
We pretty much had the exact same train of thought play out in our heads: “Surely Jack will navigate us around the–oh, shit, this is really happening!”
*Rustle, rustle, rustle! Snap, rustle.*
Well, at least now we can say we know what it’s like to ride a hot-air balloon through a tree. That skill is sure to come in handy at some point later in life…indubitably.
Also, two other observations from that experience:
1) There’s a reason why they won’t let pregnant women go up: the landing can be, uh, a bit rough. We thought we were going to break our legs. But we didn’t!
2) I’m sure not all balloon rides were like this, but we cruised at a much lower altitude than we had expected. As we passed over, we were actually low enough to have yelling conversations with the random guys that were just hanging out in the middle of a field. We’re pretty sure that they had been hitting the bottle, as one of them cried out to us in his best Lucky6A character in Fox’s King of the Hill, voiced by none other than Tom Petty, RIP. impression, “Take me with you!” ¡Qué romántico!
I have to confess that, as with many of my writings, I didn’t exactly end up with this where I planned8In case you missed it, Kandy Karma Part 1 is an excellent example of this.–also a perfect metaphor for a hot-air balloon ride. So meta.
Anyways, I think my intended moral of the story was, as with Bob Ross,9See: Fuck Bob Ross. you can’t always count on your logic holding for others as well as it holds for you. So, kids, always play it safe: if you going to involuntarily commit a loved one to some order of shenanigans, at least give them a few days before the event to mentally and emotionally prepare.
I shudder to think where me and the Boss Lady would be today had I successfully forced her onto that first hot-air balloon. I suppose I would be comically referring to myself as a “relationship freelancer”, to carry on the whole marriage-as-a-business analogy that I’ve chose to use for some reason.
But hey, it could have been worse. My favoritest colleague from my time in Hawai’i, “Andreas”, had his wife surprise him with sky-diving for his birthday once. Yeah, you’re right. Fun times, indeed. I’ll never figure out how those two have stayed married…
Truly, my thoughts on this topic aren’t really complete without the complimentary post, my inaugural NSFM article, Hot Dot Dot Dot Part 2, and I know you totes magotes want to check out where that is going to go.
But before you rush over to the Point’s Patreon page or sign up as a beta tester10For instructions, check out Not Safe For Mom. for free lifetime access to such content, I wanted to muse about an idea I have had for a while.
You know what I think would be a real miracle worker for couples faced with the whole “should I surprise him or should I risk a divorce” dilemma? That would be some sort of controlled use of what I believe the kids these days refer to as “roofies.”
Yes, I am proposing an “Amnesia Drug for Couples,” if you will. I mean, it would be great if there were some other way to achieve what I’m thinking without a drug with such a horrible, horrible reputation, but right now, that’s the only practical option that I can think of. I’m definitely open to suggestions on this one.
Of course, I should actually explain the concept before rambling further.
But before I do, I need to interject here and make it clear that I’m just brainstorming/whiteboarding/spitballing here. I hereby make the explicit disclaimer that the whole ethical issue of consent, respect of personhood, etc. needs to be worked out still. I’m not condoning anything non-consensual.
Anyways, it’s fairly simple: there needs to be some method where one partner, instead of guessing how the other might feel about a given potential surprise and hoping for the best, could get a truly thoughtful and accurate opinion from the other.
So going with the roofie method, say you want to know, oh, I don’t know…let’s go big or go home here, yeah? Let’s say you are thinking of actually proposing the two of you get hitched. Tie the ol’ knot. Become each other’s ball and chain. Etc. etc. etc. You float the idea, it goes how it may, and you drink in either celebration or in despair. Except their drink has a little something special in it–ethical mind you–and either you get to keep your exciting plans under wraps, or you don’t have to endure the shared of awkwardness of not getting your “I love you” returned in kind.
Seriously, though, imagine if you could have a thorough discussion about the possibility of getting married, and still completely maintain the element of surprise. You have the conversation, you get the intel you need to make a wise decision, and then–poof! The whole memory of that interaction disappears via whatever morally-sanctioned means.
Time and time again, I would have loved to have such a method available to me.11You think I’m pulling hypothetical situations out of my ass? Then see also: The Ballad of Tiffany Chestnut (donde cuando disponible). I can think of many a situation where I really could have used the Boss Lady’s opinion, but would have been better off if she didn’t know that I knew her opinion on the matter: Christmas gifts…birthday gifts…Valentine’s Day…kids getting lightly injured under my watchful eye…potential bedroom adventures…posting embarrassing stories on a public forum…the applications are endless!
And who knows? After some thoughtful reflection, maybe you too will surprise yourself and be of the opinion that Roofies Responsibly used in Relationships isn’t such a hair-brained idea after all.
However, I can’t make any promises that it will be a pleasant one, though…
For reals, though, I recommend you check out Hot Dot Dot Dot Part 2. Who knows what kind of surprises you’ll find there?
Content created on: 1-3 Nov 2019 (Fri/Sat/Sun)
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