Welcome to the world of gender reveal parties, where pretty much anything goes. Years ago, couples announcing the gender of their unborn child just did something simple, like slice open a blue (boy) or pink (girl) cake. But these days gender reveals, like baby showers and “promposals,” are getting more common, creative—and over the top. —CNN.

You are joyfully invited to join me and Mark as we publicly learn, through a series of elaborate, borderline nonsensical acts of increasingly violent destruction, whether we are expecting a son or a daughter.

What will it be? Tonka trucks or tutus? Baseball bats or Barbie Dreamhouses? Will I suddenly become one of those women who balance a newsboy cap on their baby’s head and start calling him “my little man”? Or will I insist on squeezing giant bow headbands around my infant’s skull so everyone knows that, despite having inherited all of Mark’s most unattractive features, our baby is a girl?

This used to be the kind of information that a person would receive in the privacy of a doctor’s office and then share with friends and family members who showed a specific interest. But now, thanks to the fact that social media has turned pregnancy, and parenting, and life itself into a competitive performance art, we can all learn the gender of my fetus together!

You may find yourself thinking, How could discovering the answer to a single question sustain an entire party? If so, then you, my friend from a cooler time in my life, have not spent nearly as many hours on Pinterest as I have.

First, we’ll have a really big box. Next, we’ll open the box! Inside the box, there will be a huge balloon. Some people might choose to have it be a pink balloon or a blue balloon, to get the big reveal over with. Not us! The balloon is going to be gold. Then we’ll pop the balloon. Will the gender be revealed here? No!

When the balloon pops, you’ll see that there is a cake inside. We’ll cut the cake to reveal . . . a live grenade! We’ll chuck the grenade out the window into a bush that we planted on our wedding day in anticipation of this very moment. The bush will explode and reveal . . . the door to an underground bunker!

We’ll open the door and find the huddled form of our sonogram technician, who was helpfully kidnapped by my aunt Gail two weeks ago. (Thanks, Aunt Gail!) After we help the sonogram tech out of her subterranean prison and allow her eyes to adjust to the light, she’ll give us the piece of paper she tried to offer us at our obstetrician’s appointment a few weeks ago, before we slapped it out of her hand while screaming a cryptic warning about “magical moments” and “Aunt Gail.”

Finally, get ready to lose your shit, because we’ll read the paper and say the word “boy” or “girl” out loud. Boom—gender revealed.

Will the party be done after this? Not a chance. Once we know the chromosomal makeup of the avocado-size collection of cells in my uterus, it’ll be time to talk names. And boy, oh boy, do we have some terrible names picked out. For a son, we’re thinking Jagger or Axel or something else our kid will definitely not be cool or attractive enough to pull off. And for a girl? You guessed it: trendy, vaguely Gaelic, made-up gibberish. We’ve got Kaiyleigh—yes, spelled like that. We’ve got Harper, which would be an acceptable, kind of unoriginal option if not for the fact that her full name will be Harper Parker. And last but also certainly least, we’ve got Taielynne, which—fun fact—is the Anglicized version of nothing.

Aunt Gail has a lot of opinions about circumcision and—regardless of whether we’re having a boy or a girl—she’s going to share them, while making sure that the whole room knows that Mark is not circumcised. Once that information about your friend’s genitals has been seared into your brain, it’ll be time to say goodbye. That is, until we see you again, in a few weeks, at the baby shower. Because, yes, we’re also having one of those! ♦