[Update 5/22/08: It was only after writing this comment that I discovered I had misread what Kathleen wrote. That meant I had done all this writing for nothing. She then replied to my comment this morning in a way that allows me to post my comment anyway (the first three comments at the link below explain it all).]
Kathleen's Question:
In her latest post, Kathleen asks: "Who invented bridal/baby shower games? Can they be shot? Strung up by their toenails? Waterboarded? Honestly."
My Know-It-All Response
I'm sure bridal/baby showers are a carryover from past decades/centuries when young couples were too poor to buy stuff on their own -- and had no credit-cards to entice them to buy stuff anyway --, and shopping was a rare luxury, not a nationwide addiction. But probably even more importantly, in those days there were no TVs (with god-awful, lowest-common-denominator shows like American Idol), no radios, no internet, no tune-out-the-world iPods, no cell phones, no beepers, no Blackberries, no "IM-ing," no fast cars to take us to impersonal bars and malls, no fast-paced, high-pressure careers (which have, regrettably -- for far too many people -- become an end in and of themselves instead of a means to an end) to help us "pass" all our time as painlessly as possible in solitary seclusion (except with regard to careers). In the old days the only real entertainment or contact people had with the outside world in a leisurely manner -- aside from reading daily or weekly newspapers, or a rare book or two, or a very rare letter or two per month from friends and family -- was to gather together and visit. Since transportation was extremely slow and opportunities relatively rare (especially in the sparsely populated west), they usually made the most of those visits by making them last for hours. Besides that, since life was so much more slowly paced in those days, and since there were few, if any, other entertainment alternatives, they were seldom in any hurry to leave.
Well sadly, times have changed, and many people are not only more isolated than ever, they seem to have grown to prefer it (I've become very guilty of it myself, although I hate it at the same time), but the custom of bridal/baby showers appears to have endured for some reason, maybe because lots of women will always love babies and weddings -- or at least the idea of babies and weddings; and they just assume that all other women feel the same way too, so they inconsiderately expect them to participate.
