A Wonderful Surprise

Well today started out pretty normally. I got done with work at 8AM (I work the over-night shift!) and went home. I crawled into bed with my girlfriend and had every intention of crashing and sleeping most of the day. Which I did. Glorious. At about 4PM, I finally woke up and started watching Kitchen Nightmares with Chef Gordon Ramsey--

Love this show.

--when I got a phone call. It was my girlfriend who had been at work all day. We didn't talk long. All she said was that I needed to put on my green shirt that she likes and wait for her to show up in 15 minutes. When she knocked on the door, I was to close my eyes and follow her every instruction. Scary, right?

So I quickly showered and got all ready for whatever the hell was about to happen. When she knocked, I shut my eyes and opened the door. The first thing she did was tie a blindfold on my face. Shit was getting real. The last time I had been blindfolded was about a year and a half ago when some friends from high school had ambushed me when I was taking out the trash. They attacked me, put a pillow case on my head, zip-tied my arms, and threw me in the back seat of a car. Then they drove me out to the middle of nowhere and pushed me into a ditch. Keep in mind that the whole time this was happening, I didn't know that the kidnappers were my friends.

I'd like to think they did this out of love...

Anyways, not being privy to this, I panicked. I managed to get the zip ties off my hands, remove the pillow-case, and began to run through the woods. I knew where I was (roughly) and just ran towards home. I wasn't going to give my assailants a chance to come back and finish me off. I went into Rambo mode.

This was me.

I was wearing my work uniform still from earlier that day, and put my tie around my forehead. It was all about survival at that point. As I ran between trees and jumped over shrubs, I could see their car driving down the road. They were looking for me. I made it home and locked the door.

Only when I got home did my mom admit to me that she was in on it the whole time. They were going to fake kidnap me, and leave me in the ditch for awhile before coming back to get me and have a laugh. They weren't counting on me to be an awesome survivalist. No one ever does...

I got a little off topic there. So my girlfriend led me outside--blindfolded--and got me into my car. We drove for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, we stopped and she led me into a building. For a minute, I thought we were at a church because soft Christmas music was playing. I wondered to myself..."Why would she blindfold me to get me to go to church with her? So I don't put up a fight?" She led me through a noisy room and finally, I was allowed to open my eyes. We were at a restaurant and some of our friends were there!

LaCasita Restaurant of St. Cloud, MN

They had planned a surprise birthday dinner for me. My actual birthday is December 23rd, but as you can imagine, it is tough to celebrate a birthday that close to Christmas. Everyone always leaves town to go home and see their relatives. So I was totally stoked to be having this surprise dinner on the 18th of December instead. I got some great cards and gifts and the food was wonderful! It was a fun time and it really lifted my spirits. 

I am lucky to have such fantastic people in my life!

Cody M. Logeland