The Time I Fucked Up a Bridal Shower

She wasn’t a close friend — more of a periphery of my main friend group, but we all met in the same way, a website. She was also younger than me, maybe 10 years, so a genuine Millennial to my Gen X. Little did I know the horrid mistakes I would make at the bridal shower. Little did I know that she had no fucking idea what a bridal shower even was.

Another friend and I, let’s call her Ann, showed up at an apartment in Los Angeles. It was brutal summer, the kind that melts your face, and then your will to live. After a nice, hot walk up a few flights of stairs, we arrived at the little one-bedroom. A 1920s or 30s jobbie. Cute LA stuff.

Except for the lack of air conditioning. Now, it’s been a few years since this happened, but if I’m remembering the temperature inside that place correctly, it was approximately 375 degrees.

When we arrived, The Bride was there, yay, and a few of her same-aged friends. Picture it: It’s 425 degrees, there a small semi-circle of hard chairs, lots of cheap wine, and not a bit of food.

Yaaaaaaaay.

Ann and I met folks, and smiled, and sat. The Bride chatted with her friends, which apparently didn’t really include us, because she ignored us the entire time. We put our gifts on the gift table. We sat. We sweated. We got ignored.

Eventually, someone arrived with a couple of things from Trader Joe’s, like a bag of chips and salsa. We munched. We sat. We sweated. We got ignored. It would have been nice to at least knock back some wine, but I was driving; damn me and my stupid “obeying laws.”

We waited for a game. Nope. No games. I was actually hoping for horrible bridal shower games. Pass out something shaped like a penis. Put a stupid hat on my head at least damn. But still, I can’t deny that it was fun to sweat and be ignored.

We tried to talk to the 20-somethings. Even though I am clearly a crone, I can get along with people! But we were for ignoring, and that was our place.

After a while, I really began to wonder what was happening. Was it a reality show? There to see how long we would sit on chairs made of wood and agony while eating the same chip for 20 minutes?

Alas, no. It was just the worst bridal shower in the history of the world.

Please take a moment to ask yourself…how long would you sit there, doing nothing, getting ravenously hungry, your bra now holding more water than sank the Titanic?

Friends, I sat there for three hours.

Three.

Hours.

In the last half an hour, I began formulating a desperate escape. I could jump out the window! THE CLOSED FUCKING WINDOW OMG THIS APARTMENT WAS ON THE SURFACE OF MARS. No, no. I wasn’t thinking straight. Better to fake my death — I couldn’t let these youthful bores destroy me! OR…

I just made up a place I had to be and let Ann (who, apparently, was hot for more punishment) know that I was leaving my gift.

Ahhhhh, escape is such sweet not being there anymore! One of the top five decisions of my life, leaving that…oh, let’s be generous of spirit and call it a party.

Later on, I asked Ann how much longer she was there after I shimmied down the drain pipe. She had sat there for two more hours. Before anything happened. And the anything was the gift-opening.

I asked Ann…did The Bride like my gift?

Ann made a face. A face much like the one I made when I realized my entire lunch was a bite of Trader Joe’s Slap-Happy Salsa with Genuine Mango-Esque Chunks.

“Well…” said Ann. “She didn’t really like the lingerie.”

Now, friends. I suppose I am An Olde, but I’ve been to bridal showers. By that point, I had received one of my own. And you know what’s extremely common at bridal showers? Joke lingerie. Or at least that was considered funny when I was born, during the great depression.

See, I’d gone to Ross and had a delightful time doing my damndest to find the ugliest, tackiest, and cheapest lingerie I could find. The specifics escape me, but yeah: Uggo. Nasty. Tarty. Scratchy. This teddy had it all, baby.

And then I’d purchased a $100 gift card to the main store for her bridal registry and put it right under the uggo nasty tarty scratchy.

Back to the, um, “party”— The Bride had opened my gift, become wildly offended at the uggo nasty tarty scratchy, and threw the whole damned box away. She didn’t even pick up the lingerie, which I know because I’d taken the time to completely wrap the gift card underneath, plus a bow, so that nobody would throw it away by accident. Then, she promptly shit on me for SUCH a terrible gift.

This silly chud threw away $100 because she was so far up her own ass — greased as it was by sweat — that it never even occurred to her or her dimwit friends that it just might be a joke. Especially from me because I tend to fashion everywhere I go, so I clearly know the difference between good and FUCK YOU, SHOWER RUINER. I didn’t love every bridal gift I got, but you bet your ass I hand-wrote a thank you to every single person. After all, that’s the etiquette I was taught when I was a youth during the Civil War.

The Bride never spoke to me again, and has gone on to be quite successful.

So, friends, the moral of the story is don’t go to Ross for sexywear.

Or maybe the moral is to put the good gift on top in case someone has the imagination of a turtle.

Or perhaps funny gifts are passe, and I am a crusty ol’ T-Rex.

Wait, wait — the real moral is that it super pays to be a smug asshole who takes themselves veddy, veddy seriously — especially in LA.