5 Totally Awesome and Absent Ideas for Baby Showers

Baby Showers are ridiculous.

Firstly, babies don't have showers. At least, not the ones I've had the privilege to meet.

Whether they bathe because they choose not to support they're over-sized bulbous heads, and body weight, for the first couple of their born years, or whether it is by personal preference, I do not know. But not knowing things hasn't stopped me from explaining things before and it certainly won't stand (like a stubborn baby) in my way now.

Genetically, one can safely assume babies are all born British at birth, due to their unwavering wont to taking baths over showers. It's not until they reach an age of between 5 and 13 (research still pending) do their births of origin take over their British-bathing ways. Unless, of course, you ARE British whereby the British in you would takeover the British. Example: the perennially cleansed Ricky Gervais.

So, now that we all know why babies have baths and not showers (ie. they are British, remember...? Man, I just went through it all, just up there. Keep up, dammit), it troubles me to no end as to why women have "Baby Showers" before the impending newborn stumbles out of the womb from behind the curtains (the "vagina") and makes its long awaited debut performance onto the stage of life.

We all know how ickily covered in blood and womb-slime they are when they first reveal themselves, so why shower them beforehand?

My beautiful wife and I like to do things a little different than most (eg. eating tacos without the tomato and lettuce in the filling, choosing to take a bite of the taco then shovelling the tomato and lettuce directly in behind it; getting married at our engagement party; feeding the Gremlins after midnight, etc. and so forth). As such, we will be having a non-discriminatory "Pre-Baby BBQ" in place of the traditional, yet non-sensical, "Baby Shower", whereby males and females of either sex, and/or of the same, or neither, can partake in a casual get together.

Unfortunately, when it was time for me to stand up to the plate and come into my element - design the invitation - the dilemma of artistic difference raised its ugly head. And what a bloody big, ugly head it was too!

Being a "Pre-Baby BBQ", whereby the purpose is to catch up with friends and family over a BBQ and beers before the life-stealer shows up, I chose to use the baby BBQ premise as inspiration. Here's what I came up with:

Cartoon by Ron Acme: the infamously banned "Baby BBQ" invitation

Yes, I agree, it is very well drawn and very funny. A fine mix, indeed. However, my beautiful wife had a difference of opinion, as she is entitled to do. And does. Even after I explained that it wasn't our baby being cooked on the spit.

I did some extensive research (got the monkeys down at the factory to search Yahoo, Dogpile, Google, DuckDuckGo & Bing) into baby-cooking humo(u)r and came up with Exhibit A: a Grandfathers practical joke while babysitting his Granddaughter for the first time by taking a photo of her in the oven. Hilarious. And, might I add, old people are wise. And worldly.

Yet I knew I needed more ammunition if I was to win this battle. To Twitter! And it was here I encountered this conversation of which I inadvertently partook. It started with Australian television program The Project tweeting about Britain (yes, the circle of life continues) introducing a law that ... eh, boring, just read the tweet:

 

Next thing you know, the remarkably Aussie Flag looking Steve Wells pipes up with:

When, low and behold, I find myself tweeting back:

And nor should I. To which Steve Wells rebukes:

Haha! How ridiculous! Of course it would be, Steve!

However, despite the overwhelming evidence, and after much debate, cross-examination, chocolate, red wine and crying (me), I eventually fell on my artistic sword and went back to the drawing board.

The drawing board produced this next, safer version.

Cartoon by Ron Acme: Baby BBQ Invitation V2.0 - The safe option

My beautiful wife applauded loudly from the boudoir as her eyes first glanced upon this next effort and exclaimed, "yeah, this one will do, I guess". And so it did.

Of course, my beautiful wife was right once again.

As Boston-born Children's book author and illustrator Amy Young correctly advises in her book "Don't Eat The Baby", you should not eat babies (though, it is important to note I judged the book on its cover). Nor should you cook them, even if not for eating. And, most importantly, never joke about it.

For, as we all know, the better eatin's in fully plumped adult humans.

(note: my Editor, aka "The Town Drunk", insisted I make the subject heading one of those ones with a number in it to gain reader attention and maximise my views. Not wanting him to burn me with a cigarette lighter if I refused, I succumbed to his charms and did as instructed. However, I cleverly added the word "absent" to the title so that I wouldn't have to apologise to anyone I had inadvertently misled. Bravo, me. Bravo.)