The day the easel went home...
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Yesterday was Mandy's birthday but the day before that, I tagged along with Kim, Benita and Aloysius to find Mandy's present while they shopped for a Crayola brand pen for their mutual friend's birthday present.
Kim was efficient, as usual (but only at shopping hur hur), and by the time I reached, they were already in the process of wrapping it up. Next, we wandered around Artfriend because I thought we could get something artyfarty for Mandy and we ended up getting one of those easels on their display. Being the blur nuts we were, the people behind the counter had to prompt us to check the wood, because the stuff came in a narrow but long box the length of a car, and had to be self-assembled.
And then he overheard our plan to surprise Mandy after class the next day on her birthday itself at school and he said:
"You are going to make your poor friend drag it home all by herself from there?"
uh.oh.
"KIM!!! What are we going to do?"
"I don't know!!"
Then came the voice of reason from someone not embroiled in the whole thing... Aloysius said:
"Why don't you just deliver it to her tonight la!"
oh.ya.hor.
And so we tried to trick Mandy but failed because I wasn't such a good liar. Neither was Kim. Hur hur.
And we caused a big commotion when we lugged it to her house. Thanks to Kim for her canoe polo strength, we might have not managed without her hur hur. Anyway back to the commotion... Mandy's mother went in Chinese:
"zhuo zhen merrrr!"
This was highly contrasted with Kim's high-pitched chirpy voice: "HI AUNTY!!"
And so we managed to convince her that it was not something we picked up from somewhere, nor was it as threatening and dubious as it looked. Because you could hardly tell it was an easel from its unassembled items in a narrow long box.
Shocked was the only word to describe her. Her sister was equally surprised sitting on the sofa gaping at us. Because it was like ten minutes to midnight at that point in time, I can hardly blame her sister and mom for reacting this way hur hur.
The next day, Mandy recounted to us how her father had the same reaction when he came home and poked at the box and asked if it was some electrical appliance her sister bought from the mega fair at Vivocity. The same explanation given to her mother was passed to her father. In the end, her parents were so surprised and pleased about it that they felt Mandy had to give us a treat hur hur.
At least our surprise didn't go to waste, even if the person we wanted to surprise saw right through our plan. Damn, I really need to brush up on my acting skills.
Mandy was so pleased with the easel because we helped her achieved part of her dreams for the future.
5:32 pm
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