Surprise birthday party

During my first semester of college, in December 1963, I was contacted over the winter break by someone I'd known in high school who said that plans were in the works to throw a surprise birthday party for a mutual friend and told me to call Laurel, at whose parents' apartment in upper Manhattan the party was being held. I barely knew Laurel, who also went to my high school but was a year behind me -- so it was a considerable source of embarrassment when I dialed her number and found myself patched through into the middle of an ongoing conversation between her and the friend for whom the party was being planned. This is the only time in my life that this kind of phone mix-up has ever happened, and I was sure I'd just blown the surprise, especially when my friend said to me a couple of days later, "Gee, I didn't know you knew Laurel," and I had to quickly make up a cover story. But the coincidences didn't end there. My father volunteered to drive me to the party, and when I gave him Laurel's full name and address, my mother said, "Isn't that where your cousin Lenny lives?" It turned out Laurel was my second cousin -- which would have been the best cover story of all if I'd only known it a few days earlier.