Worse, baby showers invariably involve shower games -- strange and unentertaining contests that no one would ever do but for baby showers. For example, we place paper plates on top or our heads and attempt to draw a happy family. Or, we estimate the girth of the woman of honor with a roll of toilet paper. I've even sniffed baby food that's been spooned into a baby diaper in order to identify the flavor.
Each baby shower, then, incurs at least the following moron tax:
1) up to three hours of wearing a pastel Ann Taylor dress that makes me look matronly
and gives me kankles;2) hearing myself spew inane chit chat because I am so awkward and introverted that bland pleasantries is all I can muster with strangers;
3) losing a beautiful weekend afternoon;
4) ingesting 600 extra fat calories; and
5) coming face to face with my paralyzing indecision between suffering parenthood and growing old alone.
This is all moron tax because it is all avoidable. I can choose not to attend baby showers -- I know full well what awaits me there -- yet I still go. Indeed, my liability for moron tax should be rightly tripled because I even perpetuate these tortures by hosting baby showers myself and insisting that others friends have them, too. Admittedly, this makes no sense. Why do I do it?
The best I can say is that this is the only thing I can think to do to support my pregnant friends on their difficult road ahead. And there is a part of me that thinks that the pack of onesies I buy for them may buy me a small share of the vast and immense joy that expecting mothers feel for their future. Expecting parents become possessed with a certain faith that everything will be just fine, and it radiates from them like sunshine. Even if it's delusional, it's beautiful and, at least momentarily, greatly comforting.
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