Every Purchase Tells a Story

Posted on June 25, 2006 4 Comments

Purchase: Convection oven
Price: $50 (Total was $100, but I split the cost with a friend)
Occasion: Wedding shower

The story?:

On a cool June morning in Chicago, five friends dressed in their Sunday best sat anxiously in a mess of Pride Parade traffic on Fullerton. Late for a dear friend’s wedding shower, their carefully glossed lips swore at each stalled bus, each yellow-vested traffic cop, each missed light.

They passed up the parking garage ($24 for two hours???? We have three cars!). They searched for close spots. In the end, they stopped eight blocks away from Emilio’s Tapas, determined to arrive on time and in style.

Ten summer heels and 5 pastel skirts then walked eight blocks, to carry, with love, 1 set of knives (with countertop display set), 1 place setting (with silverware), 1 spice rack (with spice) and 1 silver convection oven. Along with the bounty of gifts, each carried, like a badge, a scrapbook page, purposefully designed to showcase their best memories with the bride.

Once at the shower, the convection oven, along with the other gifts, was easily overshadowed, and rightfully so, by a combination of delightfully girlish gossip about the other attendees, deliciously flavorful food (and far too much of it) and a beautifully hand-made scrapbook, filled with well wishes and cherished memories from all the bride’s best friends and family.

And as the shower progressed, wound down and eventually flitted away, against a backdrop of rainbow flags, floats made into giant disco balls and a small parade of boas and fishnets, five friends thanked their luck, toasted their friendship and laughed their troubles away, all for the cost of a convection oven.

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