Made for TV

As a little girl, I can remember watching movies about teenage girls having their sixteenth birthday parties.  The birthday girl was always dressed in a beautiful gown; the party room was elaborately decorated with balloons, an enormous amount of presents, and banners bearing the words “Sweet Sixteen” and “Happy Birthday”; a large, expensive present was always presented to the birthday girl, usually a car (I once saw a show where the birthday girl received a pony); and of course, the most anticipated event of the night, the girl’s first kiss from a boy she secretly admired.  And, the “Sweet Sixteen” was a day the girl would never forget.  I always fantasized about my sixteenth birthday, thinking the events would be portrayed just like those on TV; that’s what I secretly hoped for anyhow. But when my day finally arrived, it was nothing like what happened on the sliver screen.  For my sixteenth birthday, I had wished for a car, and I was almost certain I was going to get one too, until I came home one day and heard that fateful message on the answering machine.

            I had just come home from work, exactly one week before my sixteenth birthday, and as I usually do when I get home, I hit play on the answering machine.  As the messages played, I walked around the kitchen, looking for a snack, until I heard one message that caught my attention.  “Hi, Karen, this is Karen from Christopher and Company.  I’m calling about the diamond necklace you’re giving your daughter for her birthday.  I wanted to talk to you…” I stopped dead in my tracks.  A diamond necklace?  For me?  The lady had to be mistaken. Curious, I listen to the rest of the message.  The women had continued to spill every detail about the gift, including the price, full description and when it could be picked up.  I was shocked.  My mother wasn’t home, and thank God for that because if she had known I heard the message, she would have probably fainted.  I was now at a crossroads.  ‘Should I tell my mom I heard the message?’ I thought to myself.  She was going to know when she got home that I had heard the message.  There was no way to hide it now.  So, I did what I probably shouldn’t have done; I called my mother.  I told her exactly what the message had said, and of course, she tried to deny it, acting like she didn’t know what I was talking about and tried to salvage what surprise she could.  She told me we would talk about it when she got home.

            A few days had passed before the subject was brought up again.  My mother approached me one afternoon and explained the situation.  Two years earlier, my great grandmother had passed away and left a number of diamonds to my mother.  My mother had taken the largest of the diamonds and had it set into a necklace for herself, and for years I had been telling her I wanted the necklace.  She told me I had to wait until she died.  With three of the remaining diamonds, my mother had decided to have a necklace made for me as a sixteenth birthday present.  This was a gift she had been planning for years, and now the surprise was ruined because the woman at the jewelry shop had made a brainless decision.  What was most puzzling to my mother, however, was why the woman had called our house in the first place.  For the month prior to my birthday, my mom had been talking to the people at the jewelry shop on her cell phone.  She had given them her cell phone number and made it very clear to only call her on her cell phone, seeing as how this was supposed to be a surprise, and if they were to phone my house, it was possible I would answer and find out about the gift.  Since my mother’s great, two-year surprise had been spolied, she was her undecided about how to resolve the situation.  I already knew about the gift, so there was no use trying to keep it a secret anymore.  So, my mother decided that the next step to take would be for me look at the necklace and make a decision about how I want the necklace to look. 

            We entered Christopher and Company, the jewelry store, around eleven Saturday morning.  Karen, the woman who had ruined the surprise, was standing behind the front counter waiting to greet us.  She politely introduced herself to me, apologized, and made a small joke about her mistake.  I laughed, only to be polite, and thought to myself how faker her sympathy was.  We spoke about the necklace and how to go about setting the stones.  She showed me the setting my mother had originally chosen and asked if I wanted to change it.  I really didn’t want to be apart of the decision, seeing as how I was never supposed to be involved in the first place, but I realized the gift was something I would have for the rest of my life, so my input was vital.   I chose to slightly alter the original setting, taking out the prongs surrounding the diamonds.  Karen promised to have the necklace finish to my specifications by Thursday, June 26^th; my sixteenth birthday.  Although my mother tried to keep her spirits high as we exited the store, her morale was noticeably low.  This special occasion she had been planning for two years was now ruined, and there was nothing she could do about it.

            The night of my birthday came, and the necklace box was sitting on the table.  Because I already knew what was in it, my curiosity was at a minimum.  I paid little attention to the box as it sat on the table, bearing the “Christopher and Company” label.  When the time came to open the gift, my interest grew slightly.  I looked over at my mother, expecting her to be excited about the gift, but again, she had a disappointed look on her face that I couldn’t understand.  I opened the box and immediately I understood why.  The necklace in the box had little resemblance to the necklace I had put together in the jewelry shop.  I was astonished.  The setting was entirely wrong.  Instead of the arrangement I had chosen, which was a horizontal row of diamonds, the three stones were arranged in a design that looked incredibly similar to Mickey Mouse’s head.  I put the necklace back in the box, shaking my head.  My mother reassured me it would be fixed.  I couldn’t believe after all the mistakes, the jeweler, again, still managed to get it wrong.

            The next day my mother made a phone call to the jeweler.  “Have your daughter bring me the necklace and we’ll re-set it,” the jeweler told my mother.  I took the necklace back that afternoon, explained again the proper setting, and left the store with little confidence in the people I had left the necklace with.  I was told it would only take seven to ten days to correct the mistake and I would be notified when it was finished.

            Two weeks had passed without a word from the jeweler.  I began to question my mother about the progress of my gift.  She too was very curious as to why we had no word from the company, so she called to find out.  By this time, she was fed up with the poor efforts the company was making to correct their blunder and requested to speak with the owner.  He was aware of the situation and explained to my mother they were experiencing a set back with the necklace.  He then brought it to my mother’s attention that she would need to pay to have the mistake fixed.  She was shocked.  Not only had they completely ruined the surprise and improperly assembled the necklace, they now wanted my mother to pay for their mistake.  Appalled, she began to argue with the owner.  He explained to her that he had already given us a free chain to help correct the mistake, but he couldn’t possibly re-set the necklace free of charge.  He told her it would take time for him to re-coup the cost of the chain, making it unfeasible to do any more labor for free.  “Yes, and I understand that.  But while you will eventually be able to re-coup your costs, I will never be able to get back what I lost. I will never again be able to surprise my daughter with this necklace for her sixteenth birthday. I have lost that completely.” my mother, now angry and upset, told the jeweler. She hung up the phone in tears.

            After talking again to the owner of the store and threatening to take her business elsewhere, my mother finally got her way and the necklace was going to be fixed for free.  One month after the necklace was originally scheduled to be picked up, I went into the store to get it.  Finally, it looked like it was supposed to.  After all the delays and anticipation, the necklace was perfect.  The three diamonds were aligned horizontally, the largest of the three in the middle and the smaller two on the outsides.  I was elated!

            A few months after my birthday had passed, I was working as a hostess at a little restaurant near my home.  A woman and her two daughters came in for dinner and right before I was about to seat them, the woman noticed my necklace and commented on how stunning she thought it looked on me.  “Thank you,” I said.  “I got it for my sixteenth birthday.”  The woman’s face screwed up as if she had just eaten something sour.

            “Are those your great grandmother’s diamonds?” she asked me with the peculiar look still on her face.

            “Yes,” I answered, a little surprised at her question.

            “Is your mother’s name Karen?”

            “Yes,” I answered again, still a little confused.

            “I’m Karen!” the woman exclaimed. 

            ‘Who?’ I thought to myself, still confused.

            “I’m Karen!” she said again.  “The woman from Christopher and Company who left the message on your machine about your necklace!”

            Suddenly it all made sense.  I chuckled and smiled politely.  I had met the woman once, but obviously she had forgotten my face, just as I had forgotten hers.  She apologized, again, for the mistake, and once again, I told her I forgave her.  As I showed Karen to her table, I thought about all the chaos that took place around my birthday.  I can remember how frustrating and upsetting the situation was for me and for my mom.  It felt like the necklace would never be completed correctly and the situation would never be resolved.  Now that I have the necklace, I can look back on the situation and laugh.  By giving me the necklace, my mom had intended my sixteenth birthday to be a day I would never forget.  And because of how the events played out, I never will forget that day.  While I may not have been wearing a fancy dress, received a car, or gotten that memorable first kiss just like the girls on TV, my sixteenth birthday sure sounds like it could have come straight out of a script.