What to Expect the First Time You Get Roses

Getting roses for the first time in your life is a lot like the built-up expectation of your first kiss where you think it’s going to be something magical but then it just ends up being with someone you don’t like that much in the back of the movie theater at the mall.

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Last weekend, I had just finished a standup show at a local bar and afterwards was hanging out with my coworkers who came to the show out of support / to see if I had any jokes about them.

We were all sitting at a table talking about how funny I am when someone walked into the building selling flower bouquets out of a bucket in what appeared to be a totally legitimate business venture as long as you didn’t ask too many questions.

I pointed the vendor out to the coworker among us who makes the most money and made sure he was going to get me a bouquet since this night was about me after all.

What they don’t tell you about getting roses is that they don’t come as a romantic gesture from your significant other to tell you how much you’re loved and cherished but instead they come from your company’s SVP who was explicitly coerced into buying them.

My first-ever bouquet came in a giant plastic swaddle and consisted of a few medium-sized red roses plus a bunch of little white flowers to make up for the fact that the petals came in this bouquet and were not spread out on a bed in the shape of a heart with an engagement ring resting in the middle.

What they don’t tell you about getting roses is that they are not spread out on a bed in the shape of a heart with an engagement ring resting in the middle.

Also, there were only four of them.

What they don’t tell you about getting roses is that they actually don’t come in a dozen.

I tried to tuck my roses off to the side as discreetly as possible since our table space was already pretty limited, but they still somehow spilled into everyone’s elbow room and forced us to speak over them like neighbors on the other side of a fence.

What they don’t tell you about getting roses is that they are so obtrusive they suddenly become everyone’s problem, due to their thick stems that really should be called “stalks” and their plastic wrapping that alone could have been the root cause of climate change and me commenting on them throughout the conversation to make sure everyone still remembered I received roses that night.

We eventually finally got tired of talking to each other through the thicket of roses and stems and plastic and bragging, and all called it a night.

When I got home, however, I tripped a little on the stairs going up to my apartment and dropped my new bouquet of roses, and watched in absolute horror as every single flower in my one-third-of-a-bouquet broke cleanly off their stems and onto the steps.

What they don’t tell you about roses is that when they are purchased for you by not only the wealthiest coworker in your group but also the coworker in your group who likes to buy drinks for everyone the most, it will be harder to come up the stairs when you get home, which, combined with the fragility of four stems that appear to have been sitting in the back of a van for the entirety of a Chicago December, leads to a lethal combination where your roses become decapitated.

Which really helps solve the problem of not owning a vase.