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 Volume 3, Number 8 August, 1998  How Can It Be a Shower If We All Stay Dry? Hey kids! Skippy, "The Godfather of Punditry," here with you once again. This is our second anniversary here at the 'times. I would attempt to explain how it is that this is our second anniversary even though we are on volume 3, but it involves math and I am fairly certain you couldn't handle it. So let's just put that ugliness behind us and move on, shall we? There are weird doings afoot this weekend folks. Not weird as in "I swear she told me she was 23 officer," but weird nonetheless. It seems as though the old Skipster has been invited to, and will be attending, a baby shower this weekend. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing personally against babies or showers. I suppose they both fulfill some sort of need (probably help to keep the common folk in line, and Lord knows I'm all for that). But this one unsettles me for a few reasons. One of them is admittedly pretty minor, the others are truly terrifying. First off, I am not real happy at having attained an age where my friends actually celebrate being pregnant. I realize that it's just the mortality talking, but I miss those days of my youth when you found out someone was pregnant and kept it quiet until the father was informed. It just reinforced the notion that my generation was in no way, shape or form ready to be parents. I still don't think that we are, but apparently some of my compatriots disagree. That's fine I suppose, after all, it's going to be their kid mounting the water tower with an assault rifle in twenty years not mine. The problem is that if all of these people my age are old enough to be parents than where does that leave me (because frankly, it is all about me after all). Does this mean that yours' truly ought to think about procreating? I think you will all join me in being terrified at that idea coming to pass. My second problem with this whole baby shower thing is the fact that I, a guy, have been invited at all. Again, don't get me wrong, the people that are holding this little soiree are my best friends and I love them dearly, but I am a guy after all. To put it bluntly (and do I ever put it any other way) guys don't belong at baby showers. The idea of mixing guys and baby showers is wrong on so many levels that I won't even try to list them here. The main problem is that it seems to me as though a line has been crossed here, a line that was drawn a long time ago for a very good reason. My father has four kids, his friends have all had kids. He has, I am sure, had countless opportunities to attend baby showers. Do you think he has ever attended one? Lord no, the idea of attending a baby shower is simply inconceivable to men of my father's generation, right up there with videotaping the birth (another concept that worries me to no end). My generation on the other hand sees nothing wrong with this, a friend of mine once said that he had attended a coed baby shower and aside from the gift opening it was just like any other party. Well that's really what's wrong with the idea isn't it? A baby shower isn't supposed to be "just like any other party." It's supposed to be the day when a woman can revel in being the unquestioned center of attention in a glorious celebration of her impending motherhood. Guys cannot do this, we might try, we might even succeed for a short time, but you know that eventually we will be off in a corner talking about football and trying to figure out who at the party is single and drunk. We just can't help it, we are biologically incapable of 'getting' motherhood, we have no reference points in our minds to handle it. It would be like trying to force someone that has never seen the written word to do the New York Times crossword, they just couldn't grasp the concept. The third and most frightening trend that this represents is the mixing and mingling of traditional gender activities that really can only lead to one thing. That's right, coed bachelor parties. How long will it be, before that last bastion of maleness is invaded and conquered by women? Do any of you men out there reading this really want women at your bachelor party? A man's bachelor party is the last sacred thing in his life. Football is pretty much gone, the men's clubs of days gone by are all admitting women, we really have no other place to be men among men other than that one night of swinish rutting known as the modern bachelor party. When the day comes that a woman does try to get in on your bachelor party what will you say? Are you going to look the woman you are about to marry right in the eye and say to her, "I'm sorry dearest, but this is my last chance to act like a pig without morals and you being there would really cramp my style." No, you will say, "I guess that would be OK, it's probably going to be pretty boring anyway." You will then run to phone and beg your best man to cancel the exotic contortionist that he had lined up for the evening. Think about some of the bachelor parties you have been to and imagine how they would have gone down had women been present...scary isn't it? I can foresee the day when two guys are sitting around talking and one of them says, "Yeah, I went to a coed bachelor party the other night and aside from when the stripper showed up it was just like any other party." Maybe you want to live in a world like that, but I certainly don't. Think about it, meanwhile I have to go get a baby gift.
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