We went to a baby shower yesterday. It was quite a nice party - most of the mothers' group families showed up. We brought beer and salad; both were successes.
It was a family time - the floor was alive with toddlers chasing each other and head-butting the decor. A good number of daddies was in evidence as well, and that helped to leaven the thick perfume of estrogen in the air.
We played group games. The first involved guessing the identities of ten unlabeled jars of baby food. Spouse and I were a team - until she saw what I was writing.
"Grey Poupon."
"Frat spew."
"Gesundheit."
"Durian w/Bacon."
"Vegemite."
"Time to change that dressing."
Rehydrated baby powder."
Her competitive instinct (entry with most right guesses won a prize) was fully erect, so she made me write real guesses next to my Latherings. She still came in second. There was no Honorable Mention for Best South Park Imitation. Mommies.
I redeemed myself when I won the next event - pick itty safety pins out of a bowl of rice blindfolded. I'm the fine motor specialist in the house (no, I don't do Jaguar rebuilds) so I was on the spot for that. We didn't even try the third event - diaper and dress a teddy bear blindfolded with 60 seconds' time.
The showeree then opened her presents. One was a pair of small wire baskets. A mystified onlooker asked what they were for, and the hostess said that you put your nipples in them to dry. This drew some giggles and hoots as the hostess realized that we weren't all thinking Evenflo.
The major group activity of the evening was to take index cards and draw art depictions of the letters of the alphabet. Spouse signed us up for E and P. Worse, she determined that she wanted me to draw an elephant and a panda. The elephant came out ok, but try as I might, the panda came out looking like a fetal baboon with a trisomy. So I punted and drew a python instead - draped in snakey pleats on a tree branch.
There were letters left over, so I was elected (funny how that happens) to do X. There was no stinking way I was gonna do a xylophone or an even more trite X-ray. Nooo, I had to be me. But try as I might, I couldn't come up with any X-words, and there wasn't a dictionary in the house. (And my Xena looked like Roseanne healing a rhinoplasty.) "I got Microsoft Lexicon on my work machine." Uh, okay, thanks. So I punted again! and drew an axe. But not before drawing a rear view of a fellow splaying a trenchcoat (exposure) or a severed head next to a cutting tool (axident). (Those were the dis-cards.) This drew hoots from the beery males and scowls of dismay from all the concerned mothers. Waht was Helen getting at home, I could read scrolling across their foreheads in thirty-point Times Roman.
I sat to put a shoe on Helen, and three other toddlers came by and sat on me and cooed like pelicans on a snag. Heaven. |
