Short Story / Celebration (Analysis)
Celebration
You’d be surprised how many of these things take place every day. Across the country, the number must be in the tens of thousands, if not more. They take place a lot more often than you’d think and are difficult to locate unless you’ve been invited. Sometimes you’ll be eavesdropping at the grocery store, the mall, or at church, and you’ll get the details. All you really need is the date, time and location. You try your best, but in the beginning, there are a lot of mistakes to be made, and if you don’t learn from them, then you can forget ever successfully pulling something like this off. You’re just so eager right out of the gate that you just don’t take the time, or the consideration, that’s necessary in order to do this in a proper manner.
Lots of rookie mistakes.
First and foremost, always bring a gift. Just showing up and trying to get in doesn’t always work. However, if you show up with a gift, the person at the door will feel uncomfortable turning you away. Just make up a name and walk in hoisting the package in the air.
It’s that simple.
Secondly, you must wrap your gift in a very basic manner. To accomplish this, stay away from busy patterns, stick to pastels and don’t even think about anything metallic. If your gift is opened about halfway through the event then it will have that much more of an impact.
Receiving by way of giving.
In order to blend in at one of these gatherings, you really must take quite a few things into consideration. Experiment with different hair colors and skin tones. If show up as a platinum blonde with a deep tan, you might as well wear a sequin jumpsuit.
Subtlety is key.
For instance, rosy cheeks coupled with blonde curls gives off the subliminal message of:
“I’m cute. I’m harmless. Let me in.”
Another thing you must take into account is what you’re going to wear. If you just show up in your normal, everyday clothes, you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. A separate wardrobe is essential, especially in avoiding being identified after the fact.
Don’t wear the same outfit twice.
If you have an assortment of cardigans, polo shirts, skirts, high heels and sandals, then you should fit right in with these people. Once you’ve taken these steps, there is no good reason why they won’t just let you walk right in.
All of these houses are the same. Similar constructions based off nearly identical floor plans. One would think it would be hard to find the right house in the midst of this kind of situation, but the sad truth is they make a spectacle out of this event. White picket fences with a balloon attached to each board, dangling upward. Reaching for the sky.
Trust me, after you put in this amount of work, your first successful mission will stand out in your mind for all time.
Mine was four months ago.
Parked on both sides of the street were mini vans, sport utility vehicles and luxury sedans for at least two blocks in either direction of the residence.
Although the front door was made out of solid oak, it could not shield the outside world from the noise coming from within the house. Seconds after knocking, the front door opened and a chubby lady with short, spiked hair stepped out in a hurry. She was holding a champagne glass that was half empty, and by the looks of her flush face, it had seen a few refills. With a small hiccup, she looked down to see the small, wrapped box between my hands, then her gaze slowly climbed back upward toward my face.
“Hi there, who are you?” she asked.
Screams and laughter poured out of a room behind her and rushed past me into the outside world.
“I’m a friend of Jenny’s, she told me to show up at eleven!”
Jenny is a safe name to use, because let’s face it, with these kind of people, there is always bound to be a Jenny.
Or a Stephanie.
Or a Megan.
She quickly ushered me inside with her chubby fingers and huge grin. Following the noise into the living room, there they were. The entire lot of them sitting, standing and lying down all over the room. One woman sitting in the middle of the room had their full attention. Seeing the way they reacted to her made me think of how a cult might view its leader. Hanging on her every word, waiting for any amount of recognition in order to feel whole.
A table loaded with gifts sat in the corner of the room, the perfect place to set down my little contribution. In a room this crowded, you really should stand for the best possible view.
Waiting is the worst part. Having to sit there and watch her hold up each gift in the air, followed by thanking the person who gave it to her. After what seemed like an eternity, she was handed a pink box adorned with a simple red ribbon, and my heart began to race. Attached to the top of the box was a small greeting card inside a pink envelope.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then just how powerful is the written word?
As she opened the card, the message inside played in my mind:
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get these to you sooner. Despite your feelings toward the situation, I wish you the best of luck.”
The card wasn’t signed, an intentional oversight. The less pieces of information you have to fabricate the better.
After reading the card, a slight look of confusion came over her face. Her curiosity got the better of her and she proceeded to tear open the package with the tenacity of a wild cat on top of its latest prey. Small pieces of the pink paper flew around her until the small cardboard box was exposed.
Once the box was opened, she peeled back every layer of paper covering what was inside. When you know a moment of recognition is coming, well, it’s just that much easier spot. A look of confusion came over her face, but it wasn’t until she pulled it out of the box, and held it up for everyone to see, that she connected the message on the card with the gift.
Silence fell over the room when everyone realized that they were staring at a box of condoms, and the mother-to-be burst into tears. All of the friends around her, all of the people who are trying their best to pretend they love this young woman in her time of need, they all huddle around her, not so much actually caring about why she is so upset, but more so in the fact that it might make for good gossip at a later time.
When your deepest, darkest secret is revealed to a group of your peers without your prior consent, well, it can be painful. The fragile state these women are in, with all of the hormones and the “eating for two”, well, it’s just too easy.
This young, healthy and very pregnant woman just showed all of us that she isn’t ready for this, but more importantly, she was upset that my gift arrived about seven months too late. When you work so hard to witness such a moment in time, and succeed, well, let’s just say that you’ll never get enough.
The next week, at a lovely seven-bedroom home up on a hill for all to see, another young woman received a box full of day planners, one for each of the next eighteen years. Each day of the week represented by a small box, and in every one of these boxes someone wrote the word “BUSY” is bold, red letters.
You know, just to make sure she knew what she was getting into.
She threw up all over a brand new dual-stroller that would someday be filled by the set of twins that she clearly didn’t want.
The week after that, in the den of a small cottage home out in the country, another young woman received a photo album along with ten disposable cameras. The card attached read:
“Take pictures now, before it’s too late. There are only so many days left that truly belong to you.”
To this day, when I see a camera, her blood-curdling screams echo in my mind.
The weekend after that was especially nice. It’s often referred to as “double dipping”, or “two for the price of one.”
In a nice part of an ideal suburbia, a woman in her late thirties holds a large stack of paper in her hands. All of the information was already filled in for her, all she had to do was sign on the dotted line, and the moment her son was born he would shipped off to Seattle to a middle-aged gay couple who had been waiting to adopt for quite sometime.
The moment she passed out hit the floor was my cue to leave. Across the street was a mirror image of every home on the block. Attached to a small yellow box was a card that read:
“I know who the real father is, and I’m going to tell.”
To date, this one has worked twelve times.
After many weeks of consuming cake and alcohol, it’s highly likely that you’ll put on some weight that you don’t want. Then, all of a sudden, your brand new clothes, your assortment of disguises, they just don’t fit all that well anymore.
What most people don’t get is the fact that something terrible will happen to them one day. Fragile people will simply shatter under the pressure, but you need to be strong. You need to find a way to deal with it and move on. Some will look for a constructive way to deal with their pain.
Volunteering.
Yoga.
Painting.
Turning your suffering into something that brings you joy is difficult, but worth the effort. Everyone has that moment in their life when they feel knocked down, and when you think you’ve hit bottom, you’re dealt another blow. Another reminder of what you’ve lost.
Your pain resurfaced.
Everyone has a co-worker they despise. For whatever reason, you feel no guilt whatsoever for hating this person. One day you’ll go work, trying to work through pain, and you will realize that this person has a better life that you do.
She’ll give you a greeting card with her photo on the cover: A poignant picture showing her head hanging downward, looking at the large bulge that is her unborn child. The message inside will be a request of your presence at her baby shower.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what kind of damage could it cause? With enough care, enough accuracy and precision, it should be able to pierce the thickest shield, bypass the strongest defense and hit its target. On that day, my already broken heart should have been destroyed, but you have to be strong in the face of fear.
My response had to be equally powerful.
She would receive my card in the mail on a beautiful summer day. Inside a simple pink envelope she would find an old Polaroid photo with an attached index card. In the photo is a young woman, face down on the floor of somewhere, a pool of vomit near her open mouth. A dark brown stain soaking through the seat of her pants, glistening in the light of the flash that captured this moment in time. The attached index card would say:
“Thank you for the photograph of your darkest, drunken mistake. Here is one of mine.”
She never did come back to work.
All of the screaming, crying and heaving that must have taken place at that exact moment, well, one can only imagine. That moment of self-reflection broke her in such a way that could not have been anticipated. To this day, regarding that first exploration in dealing with my pain, one thought remains:
I wish I could have seen it in person.
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The narrator is a perfect little shit of a character--rather like Shakespeare’s Iago--doing damage simply because she has the power to or, even worse, because she feels a calling to. And, though the character is not likeable, some of the issues raised by her (baby shower, of course it’s a her) are intriguing. She’s also a bit creepy, like the little old lady who attends every funeral in town.
The story is somewhat out of balance, the first several pages of conversational instruction out of place. I like the “first this, then that” step method of creating a cynical tone and pattern of thinking but it probably should come later in the story. I think the story really starts with “Trust me, after you put in this amount of work, your first successful mission will stand out in your mind for all time. Mine was four months ago.” I don’t know if this is really a good opening but this is the natural beginning, in media res, so to speak.
The biggest problem I had with the story, and I read it twice, was in organization and orientation. It was deep into the story before I knew the event was a baby shower. As I read it again, I think that the story will not suffer if we know what the event is up front. The coyness in naming the subject matter does not strengthen the work nor would revealing it at the outset weaken the tale.
There are a couple of awkward contructions, holding presents “between” one’s hands rather than “in” one’s hands for example, but those can be eliminated by a careful proof-read. I also like the title and the irony contained therein. Good luck with it.
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This is a sneaky piece of work which starts slowly and builds. I really enjoyed it, which perhaps says as much about me as it does about the piece but there we go!
It is quirky, and amusing and with a bit of polish should read really well. A few suggestions for improvements which I hope will be helpful.
Page 1 – this first para is rather laboured and repetitive and I wondered if you could start with the line which opens the next para. ‘First and foremost always bring a gift.’ Before building the descriptions of what might go wrong. That way you start with an intriguing fist statement and can develop the theme at the back of it once your reader is saying ‘A gift? Why?’
Page two – again some of your descriptions are a little laboured and could be snappier. Consider ‘Parked on both sides of the street were mini vans, sport utility vehicles and luxury sedans for at least two blocks in either direction of the residence.’ compared to ‘For at least two blocks in either direction the street was lined with an assortment of vehicles.’
Page three – You make some grammatical errors here which need correcting, I think the placement of you dependent clauses are a little bit odd. For example
‘She quickly ushered me inside with her chubby fingers and huge grin.’ This sounds as though you are joining her fingers and grin in the living room. Try something like ‘Waving her chubby fingers she ushered me inside, a huge grin on her sticky face.’
Page four – some of the images here are very good, others are rather over written. You talk about the ‘tenacity of a wild cat on top of its latest prey.’ Do you mean ferocity? Tenacity doesn’t seem to fit for something she does very quickly (otherwise she wouldn’t shred it.)
Pages five through seven. I found their reactions a little unbelievable, throughing up, screaming etc. and wondered if a more restrained but equally devastated response might not improve the general malevolence of the piece, which does come over but which is very core asset and needs to be milked for all it’s worth. I want the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck and they’re not quite doing it yet. I’m sure that with this idea (which threatens that which people tend to hold most dear) you could make it work.
Hope this is helpful.
This piece was fantastic. At first I thought it seemed like that movie “The Wedding Crashers” until I found that A) the main character was female, and B) the target was expecting mothers.
I found your “gift ideas” quite comical and the whole piece had me laughing.
There were a few thing sthat I found that you should think about fixing. There were a few spots where you skipped a word (ex:”If show up”, should be ”If you show up”)
Secondly, I wonder where the deep rooted hatred for Baby showers come from (or mor impartantly the women who throw them.) Was it simply the incident with her co-worker? Or is there something deeper? Maybe take more time with it, see if you can get us more into her psyche.
I can imagine much fun, being had by all… I think this is the kind of story, secretly we all wish we had the courage to follow through on certain occasions, especially the work colleague. Often, we never think about the person trying so hard to fool us all into thinking, they have the perfect life. By the sheer voracity and energy involved in maintaining such a facade, should be a clear indication that we have the better life. Free from the worry of what others think.
Loved the story, did make me crindge and I will give you an excellent for that! it’s getting harder and harder to bring that out in me these days…
Congratulations, you have invented a new genre. Wedding Crashers, look out. I have never read anything so funny in my life. You are a wicked person and will go to hell, but you’ll have lots of good company.
Baby shower crashing. What a novel concept and I love it. I love your description of the faces as they open your gifts. A box of condoms? Planners for the next 18 years? I never, ever, would have dreamt up something so off the cuff, laugh your ass off funny.
And you’re right about the names, only you might want to add “Ashley”, “Courtney”, “Kaitlyn” and Heather to your list. Only a suggestion.
A few punctuation errors, but I am still laughing and in this mood I definitely do not feel like pointing out punctuation or grammar faults. Your story stands on its own and salutes itself proudly.
You really ought to be ashamed, but then, so should I.
I LOVED it!
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