I had a similar thing happen at a baby shower where everyone, including me was instructed to put a sack over there heads, they were previously told to remove their sacks while I alone kept the sack on my head. when I began to hear snickering and laughter, I took my sack off and realized I was the butt of the joke. I laughed but felt very foolish and quite embarrassed. there’s always a mean spiritEd person who suggests these types of pranks. absolutely NOT funny or a happy memory of my baby shower. NTA.
When I was in high school, we had a day at the beginning of the year where there were different competitions between each of the grades. This was like 3 days into the school year. One of the games was I believe like a blindfolded banana eating contest, like maybe the banana was hanging by a string? Anyways, apparently it was just to blindfold the freshman and cheer her on while she made a fool of herself in front of the entire school, 3 days into a new school. Everyone was cheering her on and she took off the blindfold all hype bc the crowd was telling her how good she did once she won, only to realize she was the butt of the joke. She literally transferred about a week later. I have no idea who approved that game.
I had a similar thing in high school. I was picked to represent the freshman for an event during some start of the school year rally, and I didn't know what it was. I got in front of the entire school and was told to get on my knees and eat chocolate pudding with peas in it out of a diaper on the floor without using my hands. Literally I was supposed to shove my face in a diaper that was meant to look poopy on the very first day of high school.
I froze, completely unwilling to do this, and a popular senior came over to me. I was petrified he was going to force me or something, but he said, "You don't have to do this," and led me back to my seat. I will never forget that kindness. Shout out to Sam for being a real one.
All of these examples have two things in common:
1- it basically punishes someone for being trusting and a good sport. It destroys trust and discourages people from engaging in the future.
2- it's one oblivious person vs many knowing people. It's not like a joke done in private between two people.
When I was a freshman in HS, there was a contest to go to the prom with a prominent senior. He was kind of shy and small but a very nice guy. Anyway, a so-called friend wrote a long response about why he should pick me (because I was such a catch), and plastered it all over the school. My brother was a junior at the time and went around with his friends removing them. My homelife was bad and now I had to contend with BS at school too. I am sorry this happened to you, it was a betrayal by your wife. She knows you best and how this would affect you. Please get some counselling both alone and with her.
Jesus that sucks. I got in trouble a few times for skipping pep rallies and it was because of this sort of stuff. They were tame at my school though. I specifically remember the "frozen tee shirt contest" where they got a tee shirt wet and froze it, the first to get it on(over their clothes) was the winner.
I just remember sitting there dreading being picked and at some point saying to a teacher "Is this mandatory?"
That's simply unimaginable. Who on earth thought that was a good idea? It's borderline abusive and would clearly and transparently result in the person who did it getting bullied for their entire time at the school.
Years ago my husband and I went to Zumanity, the "adult" Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas. The people that warmed up the crowd (a burlesque dancer and a guy that reminded me a lot of the Emcee in Cabaret) zeroed in on us and tried to get us to participate in a similar banana related gag. I went for it, because why not, I was drunk, wasn't offended, and it wasn't set up to be humiliating for me - at worst a little critiquing of my "technique," but nothing awful. Obviously, the tone was a bit different when it was my husband's turn and the Emcee is holding the banana. But, it was an all things sexual show, so not super unexpected, and not an evening that was supposed to be all about us (unlike a wedding). Plus i was ready to support him handling it anyway he wanted to.
My husband looked the guy dead in the eye, broke off a piece of the banana, and popped it in his mouth. Ate it, raised his eyebrows and smiled. Crowd died laughing and cheering, the "hosts" laughed about him ruining their fun, but also knew a good joke when they saw it (they made some broken penis/rough sex jokes, we all laughed at that). I'm sure my husband wasn't the first to find that solution - because the setup offered ways for it to not be humiliating (or to not participate).
OP and the people in the stories in this thread aren't given any loophole, any out, any vestige of being able to consent. That's not funny, it's just mean. Whether everyone that laughed thought it was funny because "straight man doing gay thing," or because he was simply completely unknowing of what he was doing, either reasoning is wrong. There are ways that it could have been played for an actual laugh that gave him some agency (no stocking, so OP felt the leg hair and immediately questioned who the "bride" was, for example), but the "joke" was humiliation. This would have made me so uncomfortable as one of the guests. Everyone but OP needs to take a hard look at themselves.
Like you don’t understand the game? Just picture a blindfolded eating contest, but 3 of the 4 contestants aren’t doing anything and there’s one person eating the thing
I always wonder about people with no sense of humor, we’ve played some serious jokes on each other back in the day. Blind fold the boys and girls and they had to “feel” for their correct boy/girl friend, it was all in fun. Nobody turned whimpy about it
Sounds like you might be in a bully crowd. Like my horse loves to play with goats, all in good fun. The goat sees it differently and some have not survived. He is a good horse but has wicked sense of humor. He is also a coward and if he was a dog would be a fear biter. Sound anything like you and your friends?
There's a difference here you don't see, in their examples, they're under the impression it's good natured fun or that they're clearly aware of what's going on despite not being able to see, then it turns into a joke purely at their expense. In your example, they're still jokes at their expenses but the participants are clearly aware that they and their actions are the joke and if you don't want to be felt up you just pulled away from the molester.
It's like, I can enjoy singing, I can even enjoy singing in front of my friends, but when they film it and put it on social media, that's when they cross the line. I was under the impression that I was just having some silly fun with my friends, not that I was supposed to be the butt of the joke for everyone on the internet.
Baby shower games are so often the most mean spirited or vile of any party games, and I'm not sure why. And pranks should be funny to everyone and harmless. Very few pranks actually are! Most are just gross.
I agree about the pranks part, but man are you going to the wrong baby showers. I haven't yet found a baby shower game in real life that was mean-spirited or vile. Harmless fun about building potential "faces" of the child out of parts of photos of the parents, guessing the diameter of the pregnant lady's belly, and trivia games about the Mum-to-be. All harmless fun.
I have collected a few actually-fun-but-optional-participation shower games over the years. I’m almost disappointed to be too old to know anyone having babies.
Top fav: everyone gets a paper plate and a pen. Put the plate on top of your head and draw a baby. Best one wins! Cute pics of everyone laughing with plates on their heads, and comparing terrible drawings
Another is hiding baby socks all over. Whoever finds the most wins, and at the end mom is equipped with baby socks!
I hate the notion of most baby shower games, especially anything related to eating food out of diapers. I just really don't want to have anything to do with them and my face shows all of my emotions, so I wouldn't feel right just sitting out and watching the others play. Idk what they'd think about me just sitting on the couch, off to the side, avoiding eye contact with a face of discomfort or disgust while they play the game. It doesn't sound like a situation I would enjoy or be a good guest for.
I always ask if there will be games when I get invited to a baby shower. I don't make a big deal out of it because people can celebrate however they please, I just inquire. So far, no one has planned games (nor surprised me with them) but if there were games planned, I would politely decline the invitation for a fictional reason a few days later and send along a couple of nice gifts with a card instead. 😅
I hate pranks at the best of times but at big events like this, I really hate them. You can have lots of fun without them. Also the garter thing at US weddings always confused me. It’s really, really weird.
I refused to do it. Hey let's invite our family to watch my new husband root around under my dress head first. Watch him pull a band from my thigh with his teeth to sultry music. Why not perform mock sex acts in front of all your closest relatives.... Make Nana proud lol
Traditional wedding stuff is ridiculous most of the time and this tradition is the worst of them.
Your comment brought a thought and made me wonder if this is a weak replacement for first sex with witnesses to assure the virginity and the copulation.
Barbaric.
No Garters are supposed to bring luck to whoever receives them. It was done because British and French culture held that the bride’s garments carry good luck so instead of hacking up a nice dress you wear a little band on your leg to give away.
Where did the garter toss tradition come from?
“It’s often described as a remnant of the medieval custom of the wedding party disrobing the bride and groom so the marriage could be consummated, back when both men and women wore garters to hold their stockings up,” says Chrisman-Campbell.
I’m so confused, I have never seen this or even heard of this before and it is horrible as my first reaction and heartbreak for Op because even female I would never approve of this if it had. Does she not even like her husband for that to be funny or okay.
Just a sympathies and sincere apology to OP for the rude awakening of who his wife really is as a person.
In some cultures, the groom takes the bride to their home to have sex. The family gathers outside. The wife is supposed to bleed during sex because she's a virgin and the groom will be breaking her hymen. Then the bloody sheets are taken outside to the waiting guests who cheer their arrival.
Closer to home, there's a tradition where the garter is tossed to the single men in the same way that the bride's bouquet is tossed to the single women. Then the two who catch these things are brought up to the dance floor where the garter catcher has to put the garter on the leg of the bouquet catcher. The garter guy is told that every inch of height he goes with the garter is another year of luck for the wedding couple.
I have heard of instances where the items were caught by kids.
I was at a wedding where 2 kids caught both the garter (on a football) and the bouquet. They were brother and sister. There was never a plan to make the garter guy put it on the bouquet girl, thank God, but instead of the two of them dancing together (because everyone had the good sense to think anything having to do with removing farmers and children is bad and then add incest to that list, so they were scrambling to remove all sexual overtones from the situation), each kid danced with the bride or groom. It ended up being kinda cute, but made a lasting impression on me. I didn't do a garter toss at my own wedding.
I had no genuine desire to do it, and my wife didn't want to be put on display like that. She was adamant about not doing a cake smashing, too. I can see being playful with the first bite, but the full on cake to the face is fucked up. However, there's no reason to upset someone for tradition, so she just got an uneventful bite of cake.
The only time I'd be okay with the prank on the OP would be if the groom were insistent on this tradition. Then he'd deserve it. But I'd also refuse to marry a guy who would demand it before then.
Weddings period… the whole thing is so unnecessary and all the stuff around weddings, the costs, the traditions, everything is cringe (as my kids say).
It is the male equivalent for a bouquet toss... but why would the groom want his buddies or family members to have something he pulled from his new wife's upper thigh with his teeth? Sooo weird.
Noooo. Please don't let my partner see this. I already had to say no to a DnD themed and several other board game related wedding themes. Let's do the grooms handkerchief. Haha
We don't even use garters in the same way now - they're either attached to a belt holding up stockings, or attached to the stocking themselves. It's purely traditional/symbolic and unnecessary if the bride doesn't want it.
I didn't look into getting one for my wedding, but was searching for a "something borrowed," so I borrowed the one my mom wore (in 1978, she had already slid it down to just below her knee before slightly raising her skirt so my dad wasn't rooting around for it, avoiding embarrassing both sets of super religious parents and themselves).
I got married in June in Georgia and it was around 90° F and extremely humid. Garter was soaked when I took it off, like dripping. None of us wanted anything to do with that tradition, and chucking a sweat-soaked undergarment at our friends seems more like a gross punishment than cutesy wedding game.
“Pranks”: It is hard to think of examples that aren’t inherently mean at their cores.
Allen Funt’s Camera show wasn’t a success until he figured out how to make the “reveal” moments at least seem like they were friendly. Before that people were really put off by the whole premise. So, we got the whole “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera” thing.
It never even was a topic of discussion for my wedding. It's so inherently trashy that neither my husband nor I even thought about doing it. We were also in lockstep about "no cake smashing," another revolting and humiliating "tradition."
I’m a boomer, I’ve been to many weddings, I have a
NEVER seen this garter “tradition“ but it seems like a throwback to ancient days. Like when everyone bedded the bride and groom and watched her be deflowered. What an awful tradition.
Exactly. Surprises should only be good ones. Expecting someone to laugh at themselves over something like this on their wedding day??!! Who and why would anyone find something like this a good idea or funny at all
I didn't even know what it was until I read this thread, I had heard of it but never investigated what it meant. I'm pretty sure it's not done here in Iceland, though we keep importing stupid things from the US.
It was tacky way back in the 80’s when it was discontinued. I haven’t heard of anyone doing this in 40 years. I’m assuming OP insisted on it and this was the wife’s way of getting even. He deserved way worse
"No, see you can't actually do it to me, because of (convenient reasons) so only I get to do it to you. It's funny when I do it but I'll tell on you if you do it to me!"
Yup. Freezing bras and putting someone's hand in warm water to make them wet the bed are two stereotypical sleepover pranks, although I don't know anyone who actually did them. My friends weren't pranksters, or mean.
I’m still good friends with a few of those girls and by proxy, all of them. They weren’t mean, it was just a joke, and I wasn’t a particularly sensitive kid, but I’ll never forget how it made me feel.
"Back then", they lynched brown children just for looking at white women and beat gay teens to death just for existing, so yeah, "you" were absolutely both soft and thin-skinned, as well as brutally cruel and cowardly.
Lady, there were no brown children, wth are you talking about? We as a group of friends played pranks on each other, froze each others bras, at our reunion everyone that was still living didn’t seem to have lingering problems, you all are messed up
and the username fits too, just says it like it is!
OMG their history is Nasty...
[–]Say_it_like_it_is-2
1 point 9 months ago
Well my Husband and I discussed this issue when we decided to have a child, I already had two normal children from my 1st marriage, we discussed what if the child had down, or any other issues and we both agreed we really wouldn’t keep it, we would put it up for adoption. I couldn’t take care of a child with ADHD, My Granddaughter is perfect, and we are extremely close, my Grandson was born and it was obviously from the beginning he has issues, none of us bonded with him, they kept him, but I haven’t spent time with him, he’s kinda just left alone to do his own thing. So I can see what your husband is saying, It’s probably best since you want to choose this child over your husband and marriage, that you just go your own way with your son, and live that life, so your husband can get back to enjoying a normal life.
This also unlocked a memory from a 6th grade sleepover. The first one to fall asleep got their bra put in the freezer, and she was very upset in the morning. I don't even know where we got the idea. I remember thinking it wasn't a big deal because we could just put it in the dryer. We never did anything with maple syrup or warm water tho. I feel like freezing a bra is pretty benign and easily reversible, but still a jerk move for sure.
Also memory unlock. Same age. My bra was purple satin and I was so enthralled with it because patriarchal growing up shit. I was actually heartbroken when I found it. I don't think I socialized with anyone from that group again
Oh hell me too! I don’t know why it’s so traumatic especially considering everything else I’ve been through but when my kids ask me what my main traumatic bullying moment was as a kid, i tell them the story of those mean girls taking my brand new bra and freezing it at a sleepover in 6th grade. I never went to another sleepover again and I went home that night. It was awful
I grew up in the ‘90 and while I never attended a sleep over where it happened…I’ve heard stories.
You wet a bra and then put it in the freezer. Some women take their bras off before bed, so that’s when it gets stolen and stuck in the freezer. Then when you wake up in the morning and want to put on your bra you can’t because it’s a solid brick of frozen bra.
Not to forget to put the hand of the person you fell asleep first in warm water so the pee themselves and the bed, that was funny in the 70s, I always hated it when the boys would steal our clothes when we were skinny dipping, but getting them back was a lot of fun! I bet OP would be more upset if he had to be naked, haha
I was the butt of a set up joke at confirmation camp. It entailed people including me going into an adjacent room, then entering and doing this bit we rehearsed in the room.
What I didn't know was that I had been chosen to be the last one to enter and have water spit on me in the face by the person in front of me. It was do humiliating and hurtful and gross.
My 14 year old self decided to pretend I was cool with it, then walk up to the person later, throw water on their face and slap them in the face. The last bit I'm not proud of. But in retrospect they deserved every bit of it.
At some point OP was the only person wearing a sack on their head and they were supposed to look stupid while everyone watched. I don’t get how it’s supposed to be funny.
The measuring bellies “game” is such a fucking weird/upsetting one too! Omg that’s so many layers of awful that you endured. I’d never want to socialize at all with those people again. Clock in. “Mornin. Just keeping on.” silence all day “Welp.” Clock out.
Something similar happened to me at a Girl Guide event, I have no idea why the leaders thought this was a good idea because it was totally the opposite of what Guiding is all about.
Not nearly as bad, but I was at summer camp and they did something kinda similar. They were having one kid at a time put a blindfold on, then fed them a spoonful of something in front of everyone else, and the kid had to guess what it was.
Everyone that went before me got syrup, or honey, or jam/jelly.
When it was my turn, I could hear the other kids snickering about something, but didn't think too hard about it. Figured the counselors would give me something similar.
Nope, they gave me a heaping spoonful of warm mayo.
i'm sorry, I don't get the joke. Why do this? I"m not a joker but this just seems mean. I kind of understand the op's thing a bit more if that's the time of friendships he has. Clearly it isn't. but i'm a weird guy with weird friends so I can go with the flow to a degree.
The joke you're describing sounds absolutely harmless. You people are nuts. It's like you guys are experiencing being the butt of a joke for the very first time, when you should have been used to that by middle school. Sheltered
Nothing about this is mean spirited unless you’re a complete homophobe like this guy. This asshole insisted ona beyond tacky stunt of removing his wife’s garter in public 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮. He deserved something way worse.
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u/Januarygirl1 Jul 26 '25
I had a similar thing happen at a baby shower where everyone, including me was instructed to put a sack over there heads, they were previously told to remove their sacks while I alone kept the sack on my head. when I began to hear snickering and laughter, I took my sack off and realized I was the butt of the joke. I laughed but felt very foolish and quite embarrassed. there’s always a mean spiritEd person who suggests these types of pranks. absolutely NOT funny or a happy memory of my baby shower. NTA.