One of the old guys I ride bikes with – sort of the Old Guy Bike Ride project spearhead, if you will – also happens to be the doctor who delivered me (now retired, of course). He’s a great guy: funny, thoughtful, multi-faceted.
A few weeks ago, we got an evite from his wife and sons, saying they’re throwing him a surprise 69th birthday party next month. Of course we said we’d go, as did my parents. The last old guy party we went to was awesome, and I love any excuse to get dolled up.
But then my mom called me yesterday to say she’s now gotten an actual, paper invite in the mail, with more details. “I have some costume ideas for Alan’s party,” she left on my voicemail.
Costume ideas?
I called her back a few hours later.
“Did you get the invitation?” she asked me, to which I had to admit that I hardly ever check my mail. “It says to dress as ‘Alan’s profession, one of Alan’s interests, or Alan himself.'”
“I’m not going.”
“What?!”
“If people are dressing as Alan’s profession, that means there will be a bunch of people walking around dressed as pregnant women, and I’m not going.”
Let’s just say I very nearly hung up on her.
As the night went on, as I was watching Grey’s Anatomy with Dawn and playing with baby Lilly, who suddenly likes me after 10 months of screaming every time I picked her up, I began to think how stupid this is.
I should go to the party, I told myself. What if I dress as a pregnant woman and beat them at their own game? Or better yet, what if I just go as myself, the traumatized post-miscarriage patient? Then I could just get dolled up, as originally planned. (My mom wants me to dress as a baby, but that sounds cold and not very flattering.)
But I keep coming back to the possibility that there will be a ton of pregnant women at this party. Even though they would obviously be fake pregnant women, old dudes dressed as pregnant women – which would actually be pretty funny, under normal circumstances.
But I am not normal circumstances. I am a traumatized post-miscarriage patient.
And this affecting my ability to go to a party I really want to go to, for a guy I really like (and to whom I kind of owe my life, if you think about it) is, as I’ve said, stupid.
I am so over taking this sort of bullshit from myself.
Bakery Closed Until Further Notice 
You could dress as a baby and wear footsie pajamas. I know you want any excuse to wear these in public.
*ahem* VAGINA *ahem*
hahahaha, I’m imagining a costume already. awkward.
And if you’ve really got chutzpah, tell everyone that of the recommended dress options, you couldn’t decide and went with “all three”
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Oh my word, I don’t blame you for not wanting to go. It kind of sounds like a nightmare, to be honest. But then again, I tend to over-think EVERYTHING. So don’t listen to me. In fact, pretend this comment never even happened.
I’m going to go ahead and be flattered that you’re reading my back-posts.
I did go to this party. There were a handful of fake pregnant women there, but there was also a heck of a lot of wine. The combination resulted in me wanting to ask one of the “pregnant” women if I could try on her “baby belly.” I did not ask this, but I did promote my blog to many of the old dudes we ride bikes with, in spite of my dad’s protests that the content would be too “heavy” for them.