The Reluctant Receptionist

amanda and i went last night to the “babies ‘r’ us” at union square. we had to fill out our registry, and fast, because the baby we conceived eight and a half months ago could pop at any time. ew just kidding. we were buying a baby shower gift for our friend alyson in boston, whose shower we’re going to this weekend. i’d love to tell you what we got her, but she reads this blog. i’ll tell you what we didn’t get her: the four hundred pound high chair that she registered for is one of them; we also didn’t get the baby anything like new chefs knives or shards of twisted, rusty metal (i’m gonna call you dizzy!). i kept wanting to but amanda wouldn’t let me. i also kept wanting to buy things that were in no way related to the regsitry whatsoever. “what if we just bought her this high chair instead,” i said, pointing to a strange-looking european design wooden high chair called something like ‘skoopa.’ “what if we just tell her that this was the one on the registry?” not because it was cheaper, mind you, because it was nearly twice the price. but because it would’ve been hysterical to try and convince her that this weird high chair was actually the one she requested.

walking around “babies ‘r’ us” i was reminded of everything that a baby really entails: the endless mountains of shit in diapers, the diaper warmers, diaper dispensers, changing tables, changing table covers, changing table cover warmers, changing table cover warmer covers. and everything is either light yellow or light green or light pink or light blue. alyson and max did the only thing that they really could, as parents who have had gender studies in college: they went with one of their two gender-neutral options, butter yellow, knowing how lame it would be to surround a baby boy with light blue because boys are supposed to like light blue. i was trying to convince amanda to let me buy the baby all pink things. a baby named kaiser sklar who’s a boy and dressed in pink? it might as well have baby tattoos and guaged-out baby sized ears. that’s totally my kind of baby.

in the end we went with everything from the registry. i don’t mean that we bought everything (i do, after all, have 68 dollars to my name and had to write an IOU out to amanda) on the registry, just that everything we bought was actually something alyson requested.

as i went off on a diatribe about baby smell and breastfeeding (mainly joking, of course, since i constantly see babies at my job and have actually grown to quite like children), amanda reminded me that we are this child’s godparents. or “secondary adult life teachers,” as alyson doesn’t plan on raising the baby in a particular faith. of course this means that i plan on kidnapping it and dunking it in a bowl of holy water, thereby branding it a methodist for life. but don’t tell alyson that.

as a sidenote, i keep calling the baby kaiser sklown, because every time i think of that name i lose my mind laughing. here’s the backstory.