Father's Day Party Ball fail

After a certain point in my late childhood, I probably stopped giving my dad shitty homemade gifts (such as sloppy handmade baked clay mugs that probably had like, three different holes in them that it couldn't even fulfill its existence as a cup let alone a good gift) and started to give him actual gifts that were made in factories and not from the hands of a grubby 8-year-old. He was probably very thankful that his child was now growing up and could start to pay it forward from whence she came.

I do remember one particularly awful father's day plan that I'd ingeniously come up with when I was 6 years old. My sister was in her third year of just learning how to sell me out to my parents by learning how to speak in broken/unfinished/repetitive sentences, but she saw me arts n' crafting away at my two-part father's day surprise and so was able to join me in the plan. 

We cleaned two instant-noodle bowls, filled them with bits of confetti and colourful papers, and taped the bowls together, but not too hard. The idea was to hang the instant-noodle bowl contraption filled with colours and candy at the top of the door frame of my parents' room so that when my dad came out of the room, we would be waiting to pull a string that was attached to the bottom of the insta-bowl. The force of the pulled string would pop open the (deliberately) poorly-taped-together shitbox and shower my father with the greatest gift any father could get - shitty homemade art projects and the blood and sweat toiled by your children who made you that shitty homemade mug, which I'm pretty sure what love is. 

Shouldn't be too hard to picture it, but here is a visual representation of said father's day party ball.

After showering my dad with confetti and his daughters' love, my sister and I were going to make him a big breakfast fit for a dad-king. But we didn't want to ask our mom for help (too stubborn), and so we came up with the next best thing: toasted bread and jam with milk. Simple yet whimsical and cute. My dad would be f***ing thrilled. We were the best children ever. We were the Asian Shirley Temple Sisters and we thought we were goddamn adorable. 

So my sister and I woke up early to hook the death contraption father's day party ball up onto the upper door frame, but we had forgotten a critical thing: there was no hook above the frame! All was lost and we'd never feel the warm hug of our father. We'd have let him down. 

But my sister was a smart monkey. 

She ran to the next room, clever girl, and brought back a single purple tack ("um, what kind of first impression did this tack make on you that you can recall its colour 18 years later? Are you a liar?" No. I promise this makes more sense later) and suggested that I tack it above the frame so we could hang the disco ball. My mom had just gotten us a large corkboard for us to share, and bought a box of tacks so we could use them to put things up. My mom put far too much trust in us and sharp objects. So I, going against my dad's wishes that we 1. do not put stickers around the walls of the house, and 2. not make tack holes in the walls without permission, broke his rules so that a greater happiness could be achieved. 

When we heard footsteps approaching, my sister gave me the cue. Trying to muffle our glee-filled child giggles, we put on our best surprise faces as I yanked at the string just in perfect time for our father's day party ball plan to work out perfectly. My dad was covered in confetti and coloured bits of paper that we painstakingly carved from the bodies of construction paper, and my sister handed me sliced bread so I could stick it in the toaster to make toast, and we served it with jam and milk and everyone was happy and my mom took lots of photos for us to bond over 18 years later....

...what the hell did you think I'd be writing about? That one time everything went perfectly fine and everyone was happy and no dramatic chaos swirled about? 

What really ended up happening was I yanked the string in perfect time for my MOM to shuffle out the door in a sleep-induced morning stupor. It would have been kinda cute, endearing even, if the father's day party ball plan worked and ended up covering my mom in the confetti flakes instead of dad. 

Instead, the loose tape we used to hold the two bowls together turned out to not be loose at all, and came crashing down in its destructive, plastic ball glory and hit my mother right on her head. And even then: 

Mom: What the HELL are you girls doing?

Me: Why didn't it work??

Sister: I dunnnnno. Cookies? I like flowers. 

Mom: It's so early in the morning. What did you hit me with?

Me: I don't understand. It should have worked perfectly. 

Sister: Let's make toast! 

All the rabblerousing had woken my dad, who ended up having a rushed breakfast that wasn't our toast (it was probably rice) and went to work, completely unaware that anything remotely significant was happening. OH NOTHING DAD, JUST WANTED TO MAKE YOU A HAPPY FATHER'S DAY PARTY BALL. Sorry for failing you so hard that you didn't even notice we were trying to make something happen.

Dejected, my sister and I resolved to retreat back to our room to do whatever children do. There was always next year, we believed. And next year we would nail it and papa would be proud and mama wouldn't be hit over the head with a party ball.

Oh, speaking of 'nailing it,' remember that purple tack that fell on the floor when I yanked on the party ball? I ended up stepping on it with my big toe and it got lodged in there pretty good.

I screamed, my sister screamed, and I screamed at her to pull out the goddamn purple tack, both of us howling. Her from the fact that she thought me being impaled with a thumbtack was enough to kill me, and me from the fact that I couldn't even do father's day right only to have the cherry on top be a rogue purple tack that was jutting out of my toe taunt me.

It was like punishment for not doing father's day right. Since then, I've managed to get my dad gifts that I believe he would want and managed to get it right every time. But every father's day I think of that one time when my sister and I thought we were being cute and creative and extravagant, and then I remember the screams and the purple tack, and then I decide that I'll just get him a good read and a good bottle of whiskey.