(please don't) Surprise Me

like, ever.

Images from Pinterest.

Where do I start with surprises?

The earliest surprise in my memory happened on the most random of days, in the way that all true surprises do. My sister and I sat cross-legged on the carpet of her lilac bedroom, fixing pink dresses on plastic dolls, parading them around a dream house with little regard for much else. Then, in came my Dad, a large, adult splinter in the woodwork of child’s play. He scooped us in his arms, and softly, as though tip-toeing across creaky floorboards in the night, he told us that our grandmother had passed away. In my mind, all the doors slammed shut. For the very first time, I felt my heart fall out of sync with the world around it, then start sprinting to catch up again.

The most recent surprise, however, was a phone call telling me that my cousin was visiting from Canada and that we needed to drop everything to see him. Happily. He showed up in his brother’s tightest jeans, two more years’ worth of life etched into his skin, and a surprising Irish lilt (??), and filled in the blanks of the parts we’d missed. A nice surprise — a good surprise. Still, it didn’t stop my innards twisting when the phone call began “I have some news”.

They say that if you call anxiety “excitement”, then your brain will trick itself into thinking the winding knot in your gut is actually a nice thing. If I turn my shocks into “surprises”, why do they still feel so jarring? Whether for better or worse, I don’t like the feeling of my breath loosening its grip.

I’ve never been a fan of a Jack-in-the-Box, the stomach ache watching the handle turn and creep and then that stupid little puppet thing jumping out with it’s ugly smile, laughing as if it knows it’s just ruined your whole fucking day. Perhaps it’s the delicate lullaby it sings to you — it dares you to trust it before it turns. Jack was the original backstabber. I wasn’t surprised to learn that its origins come from a folk tale of a man who caught the devil in a boot. Jack is literally based on the devil. Go figure.

And so I have to wonder — what is it that people like about surprises? The adrenaline high? The punch of nausea? The feeling that your mind has detached from your consciousness? Logic tells me that it’s the very same people who like horror movies that get a kick out of the surprise, but even still — surely there’s a security in a horror movie? You know that an evil baby doll is going to hide behind a curtain and make you shit yourself, so there’s no true unexpectedness, is there?

It seems to me that surprises hold an unreasonable amount of power in our lives, which is ironic considering so many of us grapple with a fear of the unknown. What could be a joyous surprise to one might be the stuff of horror to another, yet we’re willing to risk it all for the sake of a confetti popper.

Deep in thought, as ever, on a Tuesday, I began to ponder on surprises. I am determined to despise them, but in actuality I cannot live without them.

Frankly, every morning I wake up is a surprise.

Surprise! The sun is out.

Surprise! You’re unsuitably tired this morning.

Surprise! This is the nicest sunrise you’ve ever seen.

Surprise! It was supposed to be sunny but guess what? Storm-speed winds.

It’s a surprise when I get to work how many emails will be waiting for me. It’s a surprise when a coworker makes me a cup of tea as well as their own. It’s a surprise when I go for dinner and my favourite thing is on the menu. Or when my phone lights up with a text from an old friend, or a novel I had on pre-order arrives a day early. It’s a surprise to me that I’m writing this tonight.

Equally, some surprises are downright awful — the milk is sour, the train is delayed. I’m trying to imagine how extreme life would feel if we attached the same sort of emotion to these things that we do the truly awful shocks that life brings us from time to time. Maybe some people do.

Not all surprises have to be life-altering; not all surprises have to be grand. I’ll consider this “surprise exposure therapy”: acknowledging that every single day things jump out at me and I don’t even blink. Sometimes the unexpected is nothing to be feared. But if any of you bring a Jack-in-the-Box within an inch of me, I can promise you a surprise you’ll never see coming.