Guy Presents

It is a scientifically provable fact that men generally get less involved with the whole "baby shower" scene than women. This includes both the fathers-to-be (who are mostly content to wait at home for the gifts and skip the whole "talking about boob creams" part of the party), as well as male friends of the mother-to-be (who are mostly content to say "congrats" and take partial credit for gifts bought by their other half).

But some circumstances require that men step beyond their comfort zones and into that strange other world of duck balloons and diaper cakes. The results can be entertaining.

Take my shower at work. I mostly work with women. There are only a couple men in the office and of those, only two came to the shower (lured by the promise of ice cream sundaes). The women had banded together into little gift-giving groups and bought several really nice and very-much-desired gifts of our baby registry. A car seat base. A baby monitor. A high chair. That sort of thing. The presents were wrapped in cute paper and accompanied by artsy baby cards that cost nearly as much as the gifts themselves.

Then my sweet male co-worker presented me with a small, somewhat lumpy package wrapped in black and silver fireworks paper. It had a pink post-it note from his desk stuck to the outside, detailing who it was from and who it was for. Inside was a package of Swedish fish (you know, the gummy ones) with a twenty dollar bill taped to the back...

It was hysterical. But I was thrilled. $20 is $20 and I put it to good use almost immediately at the nearest Babies R Us on a lovely purple terry cloth cover for my changing pad.