When a former student, who wrote her master’s thesis under my direction, was named Head of the English Department at her community college, we celebrated by having dinner at a fine restaurant. When she excused herself to visit the restroom before our main course arrived, I passed the time by practicing the fine art of eavesdropping on the table next to ours. At my advanced age, eavesdropping has become a bragging-right sport, given how pleased I am that my old ears are still up to the challenge.
Seated at the neighboring table was a middle-aged mother and her attractive twenties-something daughter. When the waiter set down a beautifully plated appetizer, the mother reached for her fork to taste it. But the daughter, in a rather loud warning voice, cried out: “Stop, Mom! You know the camera always eats first.” With that, she whipped out her iPhone, took a picture of the platter, and then nodded to her mom that it was safe to partake.
When my friend returned, I told her of this remarkable occurrence and wondered aloud what in the world the daughter meant.
Oh,” she laughed, “Her daughter must fancy herself an Influencer. She probably wants to be sure that her followers are able to see her post about the chef’s work of art before it is ‘ruined’ by her mother actually eating it.”
So have we now arrived at a tipping point in modern society when enjoying a fancy meal with our live companions takes a lower priority than posting a phone picture of it in order to make others envious? At this rate, I worry that eventually the only difference between living through an event, as opposed to posting it, will just be a matter of lighting.
When I was in junior high, I was walking home from my bus stop one day when our next-door neighbor, Mr. Wallace, was busy putting up a big blue “IT’S A BOY!” wooden stork in his front yard to let us all know that his wife had safely delivered their first son a few days before.
But now, sixty years later, I read that some young couples, when informed by the obstetrician of their child’s gender halfway through the pregnancy, immediately take to social media, not to simply share the joyous news with loved ones but to issue invitations for their huge Gender Reveal Party.
One popular theme is the Piñata Reveal Party. While guests watch at a safe distance, future Mom and Dad are blindfolded, spun around, given a bat, and then whack away at a huge stork-shaped piñata until they burst it open and, along with small candies and toys, either pink or blue confetti spews out to announce the gender.
Is it just me or are you also feeling a bit sorry for this child who makes its first appearance four months later in this particular family? Am I just hopelessly old-fashioned or do you too think that personally phoning family members and a few dear friends, one by one, might be a better way to announce such happy, intimate family news, rather than staging a spectacle perhaps better suited to a raucous birthday party for over-sugared children?
It seems the days of Mr. Wallace’s simple pride in displaying a hand-painted stork on his lawn have forever flown the coop. While Mrs. Wallace was still pregnant, our family was invited over for afternoon refreshments. There was a lull in the conversation and so I quickly filled it. Even as a pre-teen, I considered silence an enemy and prided myself on jumping in with any question I could think of to keep the dreaded Quiet at bay.
“Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?” I asked Mrs. Wallace with great enthusiasm and true interest. “Oh, we don’t care what we have, as long as it’s healthy,” she answered with a smile, as the question must have been answered in the same manner for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Until now. Along with the piñata reveal fad, many prospective parents today monetize their entire pregnancy by creating blogs and social media accounts through which they can lure a large viewing audience and then leverage their viewership by securing affiliate marketing with baby brands and prenatal health products which advertise on their channel.
So be prepared when you ask a tech-savvy young couple, before their Piñata Reveal, if they’re hoping for a girl or a boy, to receive the answer: “Oh, we don’t care what we have, as long as it makes us wealthy.”
Email Elliot at huffam@me.com or click here