Guys… I’m really ticked.

Yesterday, we got a letter in the mail. It was hand addressed. The front was addressed to my husband (Mr. HusbandsFirstName HusbandsLastName) and the return address was a male name so I put it on the counter for him without another thought. Hours later, he comes home and opens it.

Inside the envelope was a super girlie invite to a wedding shower. I mean ribbons, glitter, the whole nine yards. The actually invite is not addressed to anyone but we recognize the name its being given for, its a member of Steve’s family. So we spend the next 15 minutes trying to puzzle this out.

Is it a guys only shower? Maybe its co-ed but they are only having immediate family and that’s why they invited only my husband? Why was the return address a guy? Is it a bachelor party and the girlie stuff is just a gag (we know someone who did this once)? If its a girl’s only shower, why did they invite only my husband? Am I supposed to go too if my name isn’t on the invite?

So after a long while of going back and forth at this, I’m staring at the envelope and I wonder aloud if its supposed to say “Mrs.” There is a sort of little squiggle after the “r” in Mr. that perhaps someone with terrible handwriting might think was an “s.” My husband consents, after a bit of staring, that he can sort of see that and says, “Mystery solved!”

But as my husband exits the room, content with the answer I came up with, I’m stuck with the fact that this invite that I was operating under the assumption was for my husband, is for me. But not, you know, addressed to me at all.

My name is Hillary DePiano. This is not that complicated. OK, the second “L” throws some people off and the whole capitalizing the “D” is a bit unusual but I would have happily accepted a 1 L-ed, lower case D version of my name. Hell, I would have accepted any version of my name. My name is not the same as my husband’s name. You can’t just write my husband’s name on something and assume that also refers to me.

The thing that was most telling, I thought, was the fact that the invite wasn’t addressed to me either. OK, maybe they were trying some weird etiquette thing on the outside of the envelope and the whole Mr./Mrs. thing was a result of sloppy handwriting. I can play along with that. But it’s not like the inside said “Dear Hillary.” They left it blank which says pretty clearly that they really have no idea what my name is.

As you are starting to realize, no doubt, this hugely offended me. You want me to come to your wedding shower, you make it clear in the invite that you want me to bring you a gift but you know neither my first nor last name?!?! Your envelope adressment had all the class of writing “Fido’s Owner” on it. You were at my wedding and I’ve been with my husband for 8 years over the course of which I’m met you many times. You feel you know me well enough to ask me to a party and ask me for a present but, in all this time, never cared enough to know me more than “that chick Steve married”?

Now, I understand that some musty old etiquette books use the whole Mr. & Mrs. John Dow system of addressing and while I think that is incredibly offensive and the equivalent of writing Mr. John Dow and his property who is no longer worthy of having an identity of its own, I get that some people feel like its better to go with the old etiquette so as to not offend the grandparents et al and I don’t blame them for it (if anything, I blame the stupid etiquette books). I find that a super creepy leftover of an era when women were property but I get that some people just see that as a fancy thing you do on envelopes so I lay no blame there.

I don’t have a problem with the Mr. & Mrs. Doe format either, that’s just efficient. Now, of course. I don’t have the same last name as my husband so when people do the whole Mr. and Mrs. MyHusbandsLastname for us, it’s stupid. But if its a friend I haven’t talked to in many years or someone who would have no occasion to know I didn’t change my name, I don’t bother to say anything nor does it bother me, they don’t know any better and I appreciate the effort of writing to me in the first place. I’ll answer to just about anything if its a friend calling. 🙂

(Now when a certain person knows quite well I have a different last name and still repeatedly addresses everything to my husband’s last name even after many “reminders” because they just passive aggressively are, I suppose, hoping they’ll annoy me into changing it to what they want, well that drives me f-ing nuts as you can imagine. Three guesses as to who does that. 😉 )

I’ve gotten side-tracked, haven’t I? Anyway, my point is that, when addressing both of us, while it annoys me, I am accepting of the Mr. & Mrs. HusbandsFirstName HusbandsLastName format when writing to both of us. But when the letter is address to me and only me?

They got none of three right. Not a Mr. Don’t have the same first name as my husband. Don’t have the same last name as my husband. 0 for 3.

And don’t try to tell me they were trying to be formal. There was nothing format about either the invite or the chicken scratch sloppy address. Even if it was a formal invite, my formal, nay, legal name is Hillary DePiano and they sure as heck didn’t use that. I love when people try to justify being rude by saying they are being formal. Making up a name for me that is anything other than my legal name isn’t formal, it’s stupid.

I am most offended on the human to human “you want me to come and give you a present but you didn’t care enough to learn my name in the first place or call someone else in the family to find it out if you forgot” element than anything else. I’m not asking for everyone to know every detail of my life but I have seen these people many times, the latest was less than a month ago. They couldn’t retain my name since then? Not even my first name? I would be measurably less offended if the inside of the invite had at least been addressed to “Hillary.”

OK, whew, I’m done ranting. But boy, did that piss me off.