Storytime: Unexpected blues at the baby shower

I love a baby shower, especially this one.

Balloons on the country drive and treat bags with caramel corn. There was blue icing on the cake along with bright blue napkins that reminded everyone the celebrated baby would be a boy.

My daughter and I were going together and we cleaned up in our purposeful best. The weather had turned cold, so I wore a sweater tunic with vines of white flowers growing and flowing on a pale gray background.

I was hoping to be warm, yet stylish enough to say I was cool.

The shower started with introductions, followed by a game which, thankfully, did not involve diapers and melted candy bars. The hostess then invited everyone to the food line where the blue napkins were stacked neatly beside the plates. There were various dips and multiple crockpots followed by the artfully decorated cake.

All good reasons to love a baby shower.

I wasn’t the first to jump into the food line, but I wasn’t the last either. When I got to the crockpots, I reached for the long, metal spoon in the meatballs and my arm hit the same kind of spoon sticking up out of the little smokies.

That caused the spoon to flip through the air and slide down the front of my sweater, leaving a badge of shame behind. I looked down at myself, now dripping in thick, red sauce.

Yikes!

I didn’t want to cause any attention to my condition, so I grabbed a handful of napkins and slipped into the bathroom to try and repair the damage. I turned on the faucet, pulled my sweater taut, and scrubbed away with wet blue napkins. The whole time I was rubbing the front of my sweater, my eyes darted about, trying to shield the fact that I was a red-hot mess.

Literally.

When I stopped scrubbing to check my progress, I had to clap my hand over my mouth to strangle a cry of disbelief. The red sauce had disappeared, but now the once-white flowers on my sweater were stained bright blue by the napkins. I stared down at this new development, then looked at myself in the mirror, voicing out loud what I was thinking.

“Oh, shoot!’

Only not in those exact words.

It was then that I made a decision, I could become a distraction at the shower and explain myself out the door, or I could embrace the wild blue streak down my front and hope no one noticed. I didn’t need to admit that I am clumsy and launched a spoonful of barbecue sauce down my sweater, then scrubbed the stain with a napkin that magically changed the red to baby boy blue.

Good thing it wasn’t pink.

I crouched below the hand dryer to blow my shirt dry, then went back to the party and ate some meatballs. I talked to the new mother, her mother, and her mother-in-law too. I chatted with people I didn’t know; two of them told me they loved my sweater, especially the splash of blue down the front.

“Thank you,” I said, deciding to take their compliments with grace instead of explanations.

We were the few last guests to leave, which means we were sent home with leftover cake. Leaving, I was confident no one noticed I was wearing my food as a badge of clumsiness — at least until I dropped off the cake for my grandson.

“What happened?” Ivan immediately asked, his eyebrows high on his forehead. “What did you spill all over your shirt?”

When he saw my face, Ivan reached for my hand, trying to make it all better. “That’s OK, let’s go eat cake and pretend no one saw it but me.”

With those words of comfort, Ivan pulled me to the table, and handed me a baby boy blue napkin.

Which, he happily pointed out, matched the stain on my shirt.

You can reach Lorry at lorrysstorys@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Storytime: Unexpected blues at the baby shower