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Here it is Sunday
afternoon, and I’m sitting at my computer alone in this big house.
The wife has gone to a wedding shower for one of our neighbors
daughters. Yesterday she (my wife) goes shopping for the gift for
this event. She is gone a long time, which is not good.
Later on that
afternoon, she returns with two very nicely wrapped presents in a
very nice bag. Not plastic, this is a paper bag. This is not good
either. This looks expensive.
So, I ask what’s
in the packages and she tells me she bought the soon to be married
couple some items on their gift registry.
What pray tell,
did you buy? I ask.
Just some pieces
she wanted for her china set.
How much did
these cost? I ask.
As the words left
my mouth I got that look that married men of any length of time
are familiar with, which says …’don’t ask’ in volumes.
I’ll know when
the charge slip comes through in the mail.
Later on we’re
having some coffee and she tells me that she wanted to buy an
entire place setting, but it was just too expensive. This was for
the formal dinnerware. She could have bought a set of the less
expensive every day stuff, but those had already been grabbed up
by others. Small wonder, some folks are faster than we are.
So, this
afternoon it gets me to thinking about how this wedding shower
stuff got started in the first place. In one sense it appeared to
me to be rather greedy to expect people to fork out hard earned
bucks for stuff you want rather than what they might want to buy
for you. But then on the other hand I suppose it cuts down on the
number of toasters you might get if you didn’t do it that way. I
guess newly married people want toasters. I always did.
The whole idea of
wedding showers appears to be a female driven concept. What
happens to the male in this picture? Where does he fit in? What
role does he play? And better yet, what kind of input does he get
to make in the development of the wedding gift list?
Now, to me a
really cool and equal shower announcement would have separate gift
registries for the bride and for the groom. Hers could list the
traditional necessary household items such as china, crystal and
linens. His would be more power tool orientated with and emphasis
on mowers, drills, weed eaters and chain saws. He needs to be
registered at Home Depot or Lowes. I mean a gift card for plumbing
would be really great, don’t you think?
I’m certain
you’ll agree that both her gifts and his are equally necessary for
the average household. In fact at our house the chainsaw gets used
much more than the china we bought some years ago. Come to think
of it everything gets used more than the china in our house. On
top of that I can think of a lot of instances when a gift card for
a new toilet flapper would have certainly been more welcome than
another soup spoon. You can have too many spoons, but never enough
toilet flappers I always say.
When we got
married, we didn’t register our desires any place. Mainly because
no one we knew had any money to buy us anything. When I told
people I was getting married I seem to recall them saying
something like…”So?” I think the only reason some of them showed
up for the wedding was to eat at the reception. I seem to
remember our first dishes as being something called Mel Mac or
something like that. I see them in the flea markets and antique
shops from time to time. Their prices today are far more than we
paid, I can assure you. Besides, they were ugly then and are still
ugly now.
I asked my wife
about all of the items on the bridal registry; it’s so strange how
none of them are what I would have listed. For example a good
mattress. I bet half of the married couples in this country are
sleeping on some cheesy, cheap mattress they picked up on sale
somewhere just because it covered their bed, but not for comfort.
Mattresses are important. You use them every night. More than your
china and crystal. You tend to keep them for a long time. In fact,
you probably keep them longer than you should. I’d like to see
someone list a mattress as a gift they’d like to receive. I buy
one of those in a heartbeat.
Besides, it would
most likely be the biggest gift at the shower and is bound to show
the bride that you really care. I wish I‘d have thought to buy
that boy some toilet flappers and stick in that bag to go with my
wife.
I’m sure he’d be
glad to get them.
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