I Could Be Your Favorite Girl

Last year I wanted to do something amazing to celebrate the birthdays of my friends, Body and Yoshi. I told them I was throwing them a party, but I wanted it to be extra memorable, so I planned another surprise to go along with it.

Body and I used to watch American Idol together every week. He's a huge fan of the show; I mostly just watched because he wanted to. One of the episodes we saw had Gwen Stefani on it, singing "The Sweet Escape." Body fell in LOVE with that song, so for the birthday party, I formed my very own girl band to perform it. (We had no idea what kind of song Yoshi would like, so we just hoped that he'd like that one as well.)

We started out with several girls, and we met a few times to practice singing the song and memorizing the words. It was more difficult than you might think--I spent hours singing along to the Youtube video, trying to get it down. I also practiced singing at the top of my lungs in my car, AND performed it for people at work, trying to prevent my inevitable stage fright. After a couple of practices, our numbers dropped down to only four girls, and we realized we'd each be a lot more visible with that small a group. But we pressed on and got pretty good at singing the song.

Then we had to figure out how we were going to dance. I have NO dancing skills. (I don't really have singing skills either, so I'm not sure why forming a girl band was our first idea.) We tried to copy some of Gwen's choreography and came up with a few ideas on our own, but we were really struggling, and I did NOT want this to be lame. I was feeling foolish enough, so having a lame performance would have been no good. Luckily, at one of our practices, a girl from the ward came over, and when we told her what we were doing, she said, "I could probably help you out with that." She choreographed the whole thing for us, and I was so grateful!

We practiced for hours--almost every night for two weeks, I think. One the day of, I called the boys and told them they had to leave their apartment. They thought we just needed to set up for the party, but we were really practicing. Boy were they surprised when, after two hours of us being in there, the only thing that was changed was the position of their couches and the addition of a balloon. Haha!

We all went to the party and acted normal for a while, then each found a reason to sneak out. We went back to our apartment and changed into our dancing clothes. We were super nervous but also very excited. After all, we'd been working hard for two weeks on this! I think that was the only thing that kept me from chickening out in the end. One of our friends who was in on the secret (there were very few who were), stayed back at the party and announced that a special guest had come to give the boys their birthday present. She started the music, and the other three girls entered and sang the intro. I was the "Gwen" of the group, so I came bursting into the room on her cue, and the first thing I saw was the two boys laughing hysterically.

They were beside themselves during our performance. For a second, I forgot I was supposed to be singing, but then I snapped into character, and I think we pulled it off nicely. It was fun to work so hard on something and have it go well, and it was a lot of fun to do something so out of character for me. It's one of my favorite memories.