Vacation - Papa's point of view part 3

Again, if you’re just joining me you should really go back and start at the beginning of this saga. 

Everything is planned, so this is the point where the deception begins.

We are still in July – I asked six friends on Facebook to post a comment on my wall about things to do in their area of the US.  Each of them came through for me.  Each of them lives in a location which would require roughly the necessary amount of flight and drive time I had mentioned to Julia.  Pennsylvania, Kansas, Texas, Michigan, Florida, and Minnesota were now in play. 

I wasn’t getting any reaction from her, which was a little disappointing.  I know she had seen the first post as I saw her reading it, but she remained stoic.  A day later the second post hit. 

She then confirmed seeing the first one, but was trying to be nice and pretend she didn’t see it.  The fact that I hadn’t deleted the first post, coupled with the second post hitting, cleared things up for her.  At first she was a little upset since she thought she had figured it out so early.  When the second one hit she did figure it out – I was messing with her mind. 

I then told her one of the posts on my wall was the actual location, while the others were there for deception.  This was a half-truth.  Ultimately, our destination would be posted on my wall, but so far it had not been.  I didn’t clarify to Julia whether or not it had already been posted, so I wasn’t officially lying.  John was going to post it AFTER we were in the air, so my statement to her would become a true one by the time we arrived.

Sometime in July, John and I started emailing back and forth.  Jane gradually got cut out of the emails, but I’m still not quite sure how that happened.  Oh, wait, yes I do.  John was planning a little surprise of his own for her!

Having two allies at our destination was wonderful.  They each played a vital role.  Jane was spying on Julia to find out what about the trip was concerning her, and then reporting back to me so I could be sure to take care of those issues.  John was working on filling our days when we were there.  Both of them were a huge help in making sure I had planned for everything.  All of us, I think, were enjoying it a bit too much.

August – Julia spent some time with another friend of ours that “accidentally” made a statement about pushing the double stroller on the beach – this coincided with her husband’s wall post about going to the panhandle of Florida. 

A week later she sent her an email to ask if we might have some room in our luggage to bring something back from her mother, who just happened to live in the area we were travelling to.  Georgia and Alabama were now possibilities.

To further the deception, I had my brother-in-law (the husband of Julia’s sister) “accidentally” send her a Facebook inbox addressed to me asking for our flight number and arrival time.  She replied and accused him of being in on the plot to trip her up.  He confirmed he was, but cleverly asked her not to say anything about the incident to me as I had been working so hard to keep it a secret.  You see what he did?  By asking her not to mention it, even though he was claiming to be involved, he planted enough doubt in her mind to cause her NOT to mention this to me.  I assume she thought we were going to see them.

There was now another state in play – Wisconsin.

This puts the tally at nine states, but none of them were correct.  See you again soon for the next update!