The Nine Lessons (16 page)
I play with friends, but we don’t play friendly games.
—Ben Hogan
O
ther than the words
“I’m pregnant,” the most terrifying thing my wife has ever said to me is “baby shower.” She sprung the words on me in the middle of the eighth month of her pregnancy, just as I was settling into the idea that I was about to become a father. It is safe to say that the eventual impact of those words set my personal preparation for parenthood back by a full trimester, if not more. Maybe it wasn’t so much the words themselves that were damaging, as it was the context in which they were used.
I was enjoying leftover pizza and Monday night football when she dropped the bomb. “August, dear,” she said as she waddled into the living room. “Do you have a moment?”
I delayed responding while the opposing team’s kicker sent a thirty-yard pooch through the goal posts. “Ugh,” I lamented, momentarily forgetting that Erin had just asked me a question. “They’re catching up.”
“August?”
“Oh. Sorry, Schatzi. What’s up?”
Erin batted her eyelashes affectionately and sat down on my lap, draping her arms around my neck. “Do you have any plans next Monday?” she asked sweetly.
Men should know that when their wives bat their eyelashes and speak in syrupy-sweet tones it generally means trouble. Alarms were going off in my head, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything that I should be immediately leery of. “Uh…” I stalled. “There’s… umm… No, I guess I can’t think of anything. Why?”
She batted her eyelashes again. “Well, my friends from work are throwing a baby shower.”
My back stiffened instinctively and the hairs at the nape of my neck stood on end. “Great,” I said cautiously. “That should be fun for you. I’ll just hold down the fort here and watch next week’s game while you’re gone.”
She grimaced and giggled, and then tilted her head to the side, which in wifely body language can be interpreted to mean, “
Sorry buddy, you’re hosed.”
“Oh, it’s not just for me,” she said coolly. “Husbands are invited, too. You’re coming with me.”
I nearly choked on a pepperoni. “What the—?” I sputtered. “No! Showers aren’t for
men
. They’re for…
women
!”
She pursed her lips and giggled again. “Not this one, dear. It’s for spouses as well. All the guys will be there. Besides, I
really
want you there to enjoy this with me. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”
“No,” I repeated firmly. “This goes against the most fundamental rules of nature. Fun and baby shower are incompatible terms. What the heck is a baby shower anyway? See, I don’t even know what they’re for, and that’s because men aren’t supposed to know, because we’re not supposed to go to them. No. I’m not going.”
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “
Fundamental rules of nature
? It just so happens that ‘fun’ and ‘men’ are part of fundamental. You’re coming with me.”
“So is mental! No, I’m not.” She raised her eyebrows defiantly, waiting for me to rethink my position on the matter. “Oh, c’mon, Erin,” I said desperately. “Baby showers are like hot wax on leg hair—men don’t mind if our wives choose to indulge, but don’t expect us to join you. No,” I repeated more firmly. “I’m not going.”
Erin glared at me, and then glanced up briefly at the TV screen. She relaxed and smiled. “Well, your loss,” she said, feigning regret. “It’s going to be at Stacey’s house, and she says if the husbands get bored then they can hang out together in the other room and watch football on her new wide-screen TV. I hear it’s huge.”
I turned back to look at my piddley little excuse for a television set. “Really?”
“Really. You sure you don’t want to come with me?”
I thought long and hard before answering. How bad could it be? What could be better than hanging out with the guys watching football on a massive flat-panel? How much would it mean to my wife to have me there, even if I spent the entire time in the other room eating pretzels and buffalo wings while watching the game? “I guess… if it’ll make
you
happy, then okay. I’ll go.”
She smiled. “Oh, it will. It really will.”
The “fun” was supposed to start promptly at seven o’clock on the following Monday, but we were running a few minutes late due to a difference of opinion concerning what one wears to a baby shower. Erin was adamant that I wear something “a little nicer,” while I felt strongly that a Tom Brady jersey and a New England Patriots embroidered hat were entirely appropriate. Erin ultimately conceded, but not before I promised to leave my large foam “We’re #1” hand at home.
We were the last ones to show up at the shower and I was getting worried that I’d miss the kickoff. I rang the doorbell eagerly. Stacey, Erin’s closest friend from work, opened the door almost immediately. “Oh, aren’t you just radiating!” she squealed when she saw my wife. The two women hugged briefly, and then Stacey turned her attention to me. “Hello…”
“You remember my husband, August,” said Erin before I could respond on my own. “He decided he didn’t want to miss out on the fun tonight.”
Stacey appeared mildly surprised, but let us in and took our coats. As we entered the large gathering (there must have been thirty-five women all packed together tightly in the great room) I looked all around for signs of the other men, but found nothing. I let the women go through all of their introductions before I crept down the adjoining hallway in search of the room with the wide-screen television.
Stacey called out to me above the din of chattering women before I got too far. “August, the bathroom is this way, just around the corner here.” She was pointing through the dining room to another short hallway.
Everyone stopped talking and looked right at me. Erin was blushing on the other side of the room, and when I looked at her she dropped her gaze and bit her lip nervously. “Oh,” I said. “Actually, I was just looking for the rest of the husbands so we can watch the football game.” I pointed awkwardly at my jersey.
All thirty-five women started laughing in unison. “There are no other men here,” blurted out Rebecca Saunders, who had helped Stacey with the invitations. “This is a baby shower. I couldn’t have gotten my husband here if I’d chained him to the back of the car.” More feminine laughter and snickering erupted as Rebecca continued. “But you must be a very
sensitive
husband to want to participate in this with your wife.”
I forced a smile as I glared at Erin. “Oh, sensitive doesn’t even begin to describe it,” I said.
Erin tried to gloss over the whole football thing, saying she must’ve misunderstood her friend about the men watching the game. As it turned out, most of the other husbands had indeed gathered to watch it together on a large-screen TV, but they’d made sure to do it at a house as far away from the baby shower as they could.
I wanted to leave in the worst way, but Erin begged me not to go. She pulled me aside and explained that it would be humiliating for her to have me leave on such terms, so I resigned myself to sticking it out. If there was, or ever could be, a silver lining to my presence there, I reasoned, it was that I stood to gain something that few other men in the history of the world had ever had: a first-hand knowledge of the secret rituals performed behind the closed doors of a baby shower. This was one of the great mysteries of mankind (and specifically male-kind), and I was about to solve it.
In hindsight, I would have been better off not knowing.
The baby shower ended up being nothing more than a strange assortment of so-called “games,” whose object and design are incomprehensible. There were no obvious winners to any of the events, but each time we finished one I was pronounced the unequivocal loser. The first such activity was to correctly identify the contents of a series of diapers into which melted candy bars of unknown origin had been poured. “Another month or so and you’ll have to change diapers that look just like this,” a woman said while I was making my guesses. I grabbed a gooey peanut from one diaper and popped it in my mouth and assured her that my child would not be allowed to eat candy bars for at least three months.
Following the dirty diapers, we all embarked on a baby-food-eating contest. The women were given tiny jars of fruit or a nice dessert such as peach cobbler or apple-banana custard; I was handed liquefied peas, and nobody was allowed to move on to the next activity until I finished my entire jar. I choked and sputtered (and griped and muttered), but eventually got it down.
After the baby food we took turns changing a doll’s diaper with a blindfold on as fast as we could (we were blindfolded, not the doll). I didn’t post the longest time, but was again declared the loser because I didn’t flip the doll onto her back to change her. By that time I didn’t care—I just wanted the whole thing to come to an end so I could slip out of there with the last few vestiges of my self-respect.
Alas, all remaining dignity was stripped away during the final activity of the evening, during which I was coerced into being the first contestant to drink apple juice from a baby bottle as quickly as I could. As it turned out, however, that wasn’t a contest at all—they just wanted to take pictures of me wearing a bib and sucking on a bottle. Once they had their picture they all laughed hysterically and announced that it was time to open presents.
I untied my bib and sat watching from a position at the rear of the room. Before the unwrapping commenced, a stout redheaded woman named Emma, whom I’d not previously met, was nominated to sit next to Erin on the couch the entire time, feverishly scribbling information down each time a present was opened. It made good sense to document which items had come from whom, but poor Emma looked like she was in way over her head. “How do you spell your last name?” she kept asking. Or, “Wait… did you say that was a T-shirt or a Onesie… is there a difference?”
The most comical part of the gift ceremony was the reaction of the women every time Erin pulled a new outfit, blanket, or other baby article from its wrapping and held it up for everyone to see. No matter what the item was, all of them oohed and ahhed like it was the best gift they’d ever seen. Then they said things like “That is
sooo
cute,” and “Isn’t that just precious!” A package of diapers? Precious? I had to join in on the oohing and ahhing just to keep myself from laughing.
Halfway through the presents my wife opened up a book and silently read the title. For me, that’s when all the humor of the wasted evening came to an end.
“Here honey,” she said, handing the book to me. “This one’s for you.
The Idiot’s Guide to Changing Diapers
.”
I tried hard to keep things lighthearted amid the snickers that were coming from every direction. “Because I didn’t go with you to the expectant parents’ seminar at the hospital last weekend?” I asked with a reluctant smile. “Or because I changed the doll upside down tonight?”
One of the things I’ve always loved about Erin is her knack for spontaneity; for the ability to be witty and sassy and clever all at the same time. Usually it’s all in good fun. Occasionally, however, it just plain hurts. “No,” she replied bluntly. “Because you’re the idiot.”
