Creepy birthday fun

Two years ago on Tracy's birthday, I sent her a midnight "happy birthday" IM. It didn't occur to me at the time that I didn't really know her that well, and we had never talked over AIM before, so she would have no idea who just sent her an IM and happened to know her birthday. I didn't realize how creepy this was, though she was sure to tell me later. Anyway, I'm getting to the part where this is relevant.

About two years later (as in, a month ago), I met a new friend at a meeting of the Microsoft Thursday evening board gaming group. As I often do (and apparently a lot of people in Kauffman do), I Googled his name, and I happened to find out that his birthday wasn't too far off. So, I pondered the best way to take advantage of this knowledge while maximizing creepiness. I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to write him a happy birthday Haiku and send it from a dummy email account so he would have no idea who it was from. Apparently it was creepy, because he never responded to my mail. So, I saw him the next day, and during a lull in conversation, this transpired:

Me: So, how was yesterday? Any weird emails?
Marc: No... just a normal day.
Me: Really?
Marc: Yeah. Oh... Oh! You! You did that? I... I was...
Me: Yeah.
Marc: Ohhhh...

After this was a long period of silence with the best look of stunned and confused silence that I think I've ever received: an expression of such utter, all-encompassing dumbfoundedness that it is an exceptional treat whenever you are so lucky to experience it. In fact, I was so pleased with my successful attempt at being creepy that I may just have to think of a way to top this whenever the next rare gem of an opportunity like this comes up.

But, Marc won't be the next victim of my periodic need to be extremely creepy. I mean, I really like the guy, and if I had done something too soon to intentionally creep out Tracy, she never would have talked to me again.


I was going to end my post here, but I figure I'll throw in another creepy story just for kicks. So, freshman year, I decided that I would try to freak out Daniel. He was coming back from something or other, maybe basketball, and I, for some reason (hey, I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about this one), decided I would hide in the closet, and when he entered the room, I would throw a wad of gym shorts at him. So, I did this, but he wasn't particularly impressed, and neither was I, afterward. Let this be a lesson to you: if an idea only took you five seconds to devise, it's probably not a very clever idea.