Random Baby Shower

An interesting thing happened at work today. We had a baby shower for one of our co-workers. I have no clue who sees who outside of work, but if our office has 18 employees, I'd say there are probably 6-8 different clicks, 9 if you count my, "Zach Only Listens When He Hears His Name" click. Its got 1 member, and in the words of the new Modest Mouse EP (love the title) ... No one's first, and you're next! Getting into my work click is probably just has hard as joining the Illuminati, except they're actively accepting new members and I am not.

As I was saying before I rudely interrupted myself, we had an actual baby shower in our office today for a co-worker, who maybe knows 3 people there. When I first got the email several weeks ago that this was going on, my immediate reaction was, "I'm a guy! I'm out! Right?"

X X X

Keep in mind, if our office is 18 people, only 5 of us are men, the groom being one of them. 2 of those guys actually being friends with him, which leaves me, my boss and about 13 girls who barely know the guy, and next to zero that know the gal.

Then I thought it was on June 13th, which was conveniently smack dab in the middle of my trip to Lake Tahoe, which even if my friends and I were swallowed whole by the lake, still would've been worth it just to miss a random baby shower. On top of that, I have a tough time buying baby gifts for my own nephews, so buying something for someone I barely know was going to be an impossible task, and thank god, I guess there's enough Corporate Experience out there, that there was the "collection for a group gift" which I jumped on quicker than a train to Jesus' house. There have probably been so many cranky guys out there throughout the existence of large corporations that somewhere in the bylaws, it says that if there is to be an office baby shower that guys must attend, a group gift MUST be an option for disgruntled male employees.

So along with that group gift (which was turned out to be a zillion little shirts), about 4 or 5 others and the boss (and by boss I mean his wife) bought gifts as well. Here's where the uncomfortableness begins. When the gal starts opening the gifts, there's no one really awwwwwwwing because guys don't do that unless they're being sarcastic, and the gals didn't really know her that well, so it's poor lady for you. She had to sit there, open gifts you could tell she was thankful for, and despite not having a clue who they came from, pretend like that the person giving it really put thought into the gift. Fortunately for her, I'm not the same ass at work that I am outside of it, so instead of making that half hour the most uncomfortable in her life, it probably merely ranked in the Top 5. For a half hour, unwrapping gifts slowly, in a congested conference room with no one awwwwwwwwwwing.

There's a reason why guys don't do baby showers, and it's not some sexist, smoking cigars kind of thing. It's because we don't ew and aw, and would rather be talking about football. A conversation about how many more years Urban Meyer will coach at Florida (I got 1 by the way), did in fact break out which shouldn't happen at a baby shower in a million years. Today though, it didn't matter. It broke an uncomfortable silence of people eating chicken strips and cake.

Poor gal, but hey, they did get a lot of baby crap.