Some ideas start out good but unexpectely go wrong; others are just plain bad to begin with. What my friend Mei-Ling did last Christmas was definitely the latter.

Mei-Ling is a total exhibitionist, the kind who will do just about anything in front of total strangers and loves being the center of attention. Even if people are laughing at her. Especially then.

You want examples? Okay... There was the time she tied her dress straps loose so they unexpectedly came undone, and her dress fell off right in the middle of a crowded fancy restaurant. In hotels she's "accidentally" locked herself out of her room with no clothes on, so she has to go to the front desk that way to get back in. Once in college she streaked across the quad in broad daylight, which almost got her expelled! Mei-Ling loves the thrill, the adrenaline rush, and the knowledge that she's doing something that most of society would view as a no-no. She's done things I would never even consider in a million years, and later just says, "So some people saw me naked, so what?" And she shrugs it off.

Well, except for the Christmas incident. Even she admits she may have gone too far with that one.

See, last Christmas Mei-Ling decided she wanted to surprise Steve with a fun and unique gift that he'd remember forever. Steve is her fiancè, they're getting married next month. I don't know who exactly came up with the original concept -- it might even have been me -- but initially the plan was for us to wrap Mei-Ling up, naked, like a sexy present for Steve to open when he came over Christmas morning. Mei-Ling decided that was way too tame, and came up with the brilliant idea of having herself physically delivered to Steve's house that way! By an actual courier service!

Of course that was completely insane, but once she gets attached to an idea there's no talking her out of it. So on Christmas Eve I went over to Mei-Ling's place where Sylvie (her roommate) and Chuck (Steve's friend) were waiting. We'd made a few calls, and had found a company who would guarantee an overnight delivery on Christmas morning if we dropped off the package by midnight on the 24th.

"Are you sure you've thought this through?" I asked her.

"It'll be fine," she assured me. "It'll only be for a few hours, and they're right here in town. What could go wrong?"

Famous last words. But there was no point in arguing further with her, so the three of us got to work mailing Mei-Ling. First she took off everything she was wearing, and stood nude on a long piece of wrapping paper we'd rolled out on the carpet. We bunched the paper around her feet and secured it in place with some scotch tape. Then we began winding it up around her body, with Mei-Ling's arms at her sides as though she were an Egyptian mummy. All four of us were cracking up at the sheer absurdity of what we were doing.

Now, Mei-Ling has always been just my good friend, but I've got to say that wrapping her up like this had me immensely turned on. She's a very attractive girl, about five-six, with those almond-shaped eyes that give every Asian woman a slightly exotic appearance. She has a great hourglass figure with full breasts, gracefully curved hips, and a perfectly flat stomach. She doesn't shave, so there was a thick, dark triangle of curly pubic hair over her crotch. Add to this the fact that her rounded cheekbones were turning a rosy red, which they always do whenever she does of her crazy stunts, and it was all I could do to stay focused!

When we got to her hair we pulled it back into a red ribbon, covered her face, and very carefully snipped a slit in the paper for her mouth and two for her nose, so she could still breathe. Leaving her eyes covered so she couldn't see was her idea. Then the three of us eased her, prostrate, to the floor. From the store where he works, Chuck had brought a long cardboard box that originally held an artificial tree, and we slid her in there after punching some air and ventilation holes in the corners, where they'd be the least conspicuous.

"How ya doin', girlfriend?" Sylvie asked as she stuck a bright green bow onto the paper, atop Mei-Ling's belly button.

"Great!" came her excited reply, accompanied by giggles.

Sylvie held the box as Chuck and I eased her inside it, careful not to tear the paper. Then we taped both ends shut, filled out the address labels, and wrote "DO NOT OPEN TIL XMAS" in red and green magic marker. It was perfect. What a surprise Steve would get!

The box was too long to fit inside either of our cars, so we loaded her into the bed of Chuck's pickup, then piled in the front and drove toward the dropoff station, which was about 20 minutes away. Mei-Ling later told us that the ride over was freezing, and I imagine it was, with only the box and a layer of flimsy paper between her and the elements.

"Last chance," I said as we lowered the hatchback to slide her out. But Mei-Ling was unwavering. She still intended to go through with it.

"Can you breathe okay?" asked Sylvie.

"I'll be fine," came her answer.

Chuck lifted one end and Sylvie and I took the other, and together we hauled her through the entrance and up onto the service counter, trying desperately to maintain straight faces.

"We need to overnight this," Chuck told the guy. "It's local. We called earlier and they said they could manage it."

"Yeah, we can do it," the guy assured us. He looked to be in his late 50's. His nametag read "Roger".

"It's a present for a friend," Sylvie added helpfully.

Roger grunted as he lifted Mei-Ling onto a scale. "Jeez, what're you sending 'em, a ton of bricks?"

"Hey!" came a muffled indignant voice from inside the box, and we all about died, but Roger apparently didn't hear it.

Between the weight and the overnight delivery, it ended up costing us about $150, which Mei-Ling had assured us she'd pay back. Turns out it was more than worth it. We thanked the guy and said good-bye and Merry Christmas, loud enough so it could be heard through cardboard. The last we saw of Mei-Ling that night was Roger pushing her on a cart into the warehouse's loading dock. Chuck, Sylvie, and I left out the front entrance, where we immediately burst into uncontrollable laughter.

"Well," joked Chuck, "I guess the chick is in the mail!"

It took almost ten minutes before we'd recovered enough to safely drive the truck again. Mei-Ling dominated our conversation the entire ride home.

Okay, up until now this has been my version of events. But from here on I'm paraphrasing Mei-Ling on what happened next.

And for a long time that was nothing, as she was pretty much stuck there until morning. She'd gone over it in her mind, preparing herself, and at the time she felt she could handle everything. But the warehouse was heated, so she got very warm in that box, very quickly. The air was stuffy and all she could smell was the cardboard, she told us, and it was really uncomfortable lying on her back the whole time. She could hear every breath as she exhaled.

She didn't want to move her arms or legs lest she tear the paper around her to shreds, or worse, have the crinkling noise give her away. And she had a couple of tiny annoying itches that tortured her, from the sweat trickling down her bare skin as she lay there motionlessly for hours on end, unable to scratch. She heard, and sometimes felt, other boxes being stacked around her, but the tiny bit of light from the air-holes in the corners wasn't enough to see by.

But the worst thing was, between her excitement and discomfort, she couldn't sleep, and as the hours crawled on she felt a steadily increasing urge in her bladder. It was impossible to keep track of the passage of time in there, but she guessed it lasted about seven hours total. Aside from anticipating her actual delivery to an astounded Steve, there was absolutely nothing to do. Mei-Ling said she replayed the wrapping memory in her head over and over, and silently sang Christmas carols to herself to stay sane. Thank God she wasn't claustrophobic. Still, as the agonizing night dragged on, she gradually became more and more twitchy and impatient.

Just as she felt she couldn't go another minute without yelling for someone to let her out, things began to happen. She heard a pair of heavy garage doors trundle upward, and the sound of an engine as a truck pulled in. Again boxes were shifted around her, then she felt hers being picked up. The throbbing in her bladder was becoming unbearable, and she hoped her delivery would be one of the first.

She felt herself moving, no longer being carried, but not yet in the truck. The ride was too smooth. A conveyor belt, she guessed. Beams of greenish light appeared at the corner holes, then a voice outside said, "What the hell...?!" It was followed by more words, urgent but directed away from Mei-Ling, so she couldn't make them out. She could scarcely breathe.

Next thing she knew, there was authoritative chatter nearby, then both ends of her box were suddenly cut open! She felt hands on her shoulders and thought, shit, as she was pulled out!

As the four of us discussed it later we realized Mei-Ling's fatal mistake. The package, being unusually heavy, a next-day delivery, with the destination the same city as the source, probably raised a number of red flags for security. The green light Mei-Ling had seen was from an X-ray machine, as the courier service inspected her container. Needless to say, when the operator saw a complete human skeleton appear on the monitor he freaked out!

Mei-Ling gasped as the paper over her face was torn away, and she suddenly panicked, instinct taking over. She scrambled to get up, her bare body bursting out of its wrapping-paper cocoon. She found herself completely naked in front of the X-ray operator (she thinks it may have been Roger but isn't completely sure), the shipping manager, and two armed and uniformed rent-a-cops. Giggling uncontrollably, she grabbed some of the paper and tried to cover herself up again. Her face was probably lit up like a Christmas tree, she said.

As you can expect, none of the employees initially found Mei-Ling's scheme quite as amusing as the rest of us had. "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" the guy who looked to be the manager demanded. It was apparently the only question he could think to ask. This had to have been a first for him.

So Mei-Ling had to sit there and try to explain the whole ridiculous scenario to a group of fully dressed men. Talk about mortifying! It took her awhile to get the words out between giggles. She was embarrassed as hell but loving every moment of it. Her laughter was infectious, though, and it put the rest of them at ease, knowing this was just a silly prank gone horribly wrong.

And then, all of a sudden, it happened.

Mei-Ling just could not stop laughing, she couldn't help herself... and she lost control of her bladder.

It came out all over, soaking the wrapping paper and trickling over the conveyor belt and onto the floor. Reactions from the workers ranged from amused to disgusted to feeling embarrassed for her, and any combination in between. More and more of them were coming over to see what all the fuss was about. Mei-Ling found all this even funnier, and just sort of buried her face in her hands. Her sides hurt, she was laughing so hard she was crying, tears pouring down her scarlet face as piss poured down her legs.

Someone brought her some paper towels to wipe off with, then they led her to a restroom where she could wash with some soap and warm water. She says she felt the most thoroughly exposed then, walking across the wide-open warehouse space, still nude, the cold cement beneath her bare feet, the wind from the open garage door blasting cold air and snow against the right side of her body. Not to mention every single worker in the place had turned to stare directly at her. All of them wore big ear-to-ear grins at the sight of a naked Chinese girl in their midst. She guessed she was probably stark naked in that loading dock for ten solid minutes! For those guys it was probably the best Christmas ever!

One of the security guys loaned her his coat once she'd cleaned herself up, but it didn't quite cover low enough. And the manager made her clean up the mess she'd made on the conveyor belt, with everybody there watching as she kneeled down, bare ass sticking out, to scrub the floor. They stood behind her watching, of course. She told us her heart was pounding a mile a minute, her hands and knees were ice-cold and shaking the whole time, and she had that excited quiver in her stomach that she loves so much.

Afterwards they let her call Sylvie to come pick her up and bring her some clothes. Of course Sylvie had to tell Chuck and me so we all came! No real harm had been done, and everybody was so entertained by the unexpected show that the manager decided not to press any formal charges. And besides, it was Christmas. But there was an incident report written up, so her name is still somewhere in the company's files!

Mei-Ling didn't want Steve to find out about the botched surprise gift, so we promised we wouldn't mention it... on the condition that she tell us everything, in excruciating detail. We grilled her for more than an hour afterward, making her relive the experience over and over. That's how I can tell you so much about what happened. Steve never did find out, though the rest of us still tease Mei-Ling about it when he's not around. Every time we do her face gets all red again and she laughs about it, but the memory of the incident hasn't stopped her from doing crazy crap every now and then... though nothing quite as outrageous as this.

So I guess the moral of the story is, the best gift you can give to another is yourself... but that's also the best way to deliver it!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

(Copyright © November 2004 by ToddCheese.)