Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Baby Shower

Hear the story read by the author.

In the town of Normal, Pennsylvania, there’s a little church at the corner of Wilson and Elm. A few months ago church member Carrie Winslow-Lopez announced she was pregnant with her first child. Fellow member Missy Moore was inordinately thrilled by this news and thought the church should throw Carrie a baby shower. Missy and Carrie were not particularly close friends, but Missy loved planning showers of all types.

Carrie and her husband Carlos gladly accepted. Not only were they flattered at Missy’s thoughtfulness, but both had recently lost their jobs so they kind of needed the gifts.

Missy’s first decision was to make the shower co-ed. After all, she reasoned, why should the guys miss out on all the fun?

Kevin Boyer had no trouble coming up with good reasons. The primary one was that it all sounded like a lot of girly nonsense to him.

Kevin worked out an elaborate excuse involving an important weekend business obligation. Unfortunately his wife Jill knew Kevin’s only real obligation was to a televised golf game that had nothing to do with his job. She informed him he would, in fact, be attending the shower. “Why,” Kevin whined.

“Because it would be rude not to,” Jill snapped. “Besides, you’ll have fun.”

After arguing the point in vein for several days, Kevin finally relented and turned his attentions to convincing his buddy Thad to go as well. Kevin figured he’d enjoy himself more if his friend was also suffering.

Kevin certainly needn’t have worried that he would be the only man there. Carrie’s husband Carlos was naturally obligated to attend, as was her father, Del. And it would have been poor form for Pastor O’Donnell to be absent. Organist Walter Tibble happily checked the “yes” box on his RSVP. He had never been to a baby shower and was curious to see how they worked. Like most organists, Walter was a little weird.

Kevin may not have been exactly eager to attend but he did hold out hope for a fun afternoon. After all, since it was co-ed he assumed Missy wouldn’t make the event too girly. Those hopes began to fade, however, as he and Jill entered the social hall and found it festooned in pink and white ribbon and balloons with cardboard pictures of babies taped up every five feet.

Before long Kevin was huddled with the rest of the men in one corner of the social hall sipping punch while the women laughed and compared parenting stories in a ring of folding chairs Missy had set out.

One of Missy’s favorite things about showers were the games and she had a long list prepared. For the first, she gave everyone a pink plastic clothespin upon entering and informed them that if they said the words “baby” or “pregnant,” the first person who heard them got to take their clothespin and any others they’d collected. Whoever had the most clothespins by the time cake was served got a prize.

Walter collected the first clothespin among the group of guys when Pastor O’Donnell commented that he hadn’t attended his own wife’s baby shower. “You said a forbidden word,” Walter chortled. O’Donnell sighed and handed over his clothespin.

“I didn’t go to my daughters’ baby showers either,” Kevin immediately said.

“Clothespin!” Ralph shouted.

Kevin handed it over thankfully. He was not really a fan of party games.

The rest of the men were good sports and tried to watch what they said, but before long Walter had collected all six of the clothespins initially handed out to the guys. He clipped them proudly down the front of his shirt.

Then Missy announced that it was time to play “Identify the Baby Food.” She had peeled the labels off eight jars of baby food and everyone was to guess what the mush inside was from appearance and smell. While the other guests crowded around the row of tiny jars, Kevin excused himself to go to the restroom.

Once Missy tallied up all the entries, she announced the winner: Walter Tibble. Walter leaped to his feet with a victory whoop, hands thrust into the air. “He got a perfect eight for eight,” Missy noted.

“How do you know so much about baby food?” Jill asked in amazement.

“Clothespins!” Walter shouted in response to Jill’s slip of the tongue. He collected the three clothespins she’d acquired on his way up to get the prize for the baby food game – a jar of applesauce. Missy did have a wacky sense of humor.

The next game was “How Big is Mommy’s Tummy?” Each participant was to cut a string at the length they thought would encircle Carrie’s pregnant belly. Whoever got the closest to her actual circumference won.

Now it was Pastor O’Donnell’s turn to visit the bathroom. He didn’t need to, but nineteen years of marriage made him uncomfortable when it came to guessing the size of women’s bodies.

When the strings were collected and compared to the one Carrie had cut, they discovered Walter had won again. Walter did a little victory dance as he collected his prize – a box of multi-colored ribbons.

“Okay,” Missy said as Walter skipped away. “The next game is the Bottle race. We’ll see who can suck a baby bottle dry the fastest.”

At this point Thad noticed that neither Kevin nor Pastor O’Donnell had returned to the party. He decided to investigate.

Walter was the winner of the baby bottle race, too, though Del gave him a run for his money. After consuming so much liquid in such a short period of time, Del found he had to use the restroom. And it was at this point that people started to notice the absence of so many of the men.

But then everyone became distracted by Missy’s next game – a version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey where contestants tried to pin a paper baby on the pregnant belly of a blown-up photo of Carrie. Walter won again.

“Walter, maybe you should go look for the other men,” Jill suggested grumpily.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Walter replied. “What’s the next game?”

“Guess the Chocolate,” Missy said. That game involved candy bars melted in baby diapers. The goal was to guess what kind of candy bar had been used in each.

“I’ll find the other guys,” Carlos said, eyeing the diapers uneasily. Carrie caught his look and got a premonition of the coming arguments over who was going to change their baby.

Ten minutes later the women watched in disgust as Walter claimed yet another prize. Jill looked around. Walter was the only man left in the room. She had a nagging feeling her husband might be behind this strange phenomena and decided enough was enough.

She headed back to the bathrooms and was about to knock on the men’s room door when she heard voices from a Sunday School classroom a few feet away. She peeked inside.

There were all the missing men, perched precariously on small plastic chairs around a kid’s height table playing poker for thumbtacks.

Jill cleared her throat. The men looked up. “Hi honey,” Kevin said. “Look, we made up our own shower game.”

Jill simply glared. Without another word, the guys put away their cards and returned to the party.

As they reentered the social hall, Walter beamed at them, his prizes cupped in his arms. “I won every game!” he gloated. “I’m the shower game king, baby!”

“Hey, you said a forbidden word,” Kevin noted.

Walter’s face fell. He tried to protest that he had used the word in a context that gave it a different meaning and thus it shouldn’t count, but everyone backed Kevin. Finally Walter reluctantly handed over his collection of clothespins.

“Kevin wins the clothespin game,” Missy declared. Walter pouted while she presented Kevin his prize – a gift card to a local Italian restaurant.

“Now it’s time for cake,” Missy declared.

Soon the guys had reunited in their original corner. “I think I kinda like these co-ed baby showers,” Kevin said around a mouthful of cake.

Walter just grumbled to himself.

No comments: