The Prejudice Wears Pink

Garfield carefully adjusted the ruffle of his bubblegum-pink dress and tried, with considerable effort, to look natural in front of the camera.

He had to keep his composure.

No matter how humiliating the situation was, he still had to attend his own son's wedding. Only, instead of sitting proudly in the front row in his expensive tailored suit, Garfield was now standing in the reception garden, posing as one of the bridesmaids who had mysteriously appeared at the last minute.

It had all happened far too quickly.

And, in retrospect, it had been a punishment almost perfectly tailored to him.

A few hours earlier, just before the ceremony, Garfield had allowed his prejudice to get the better of him. After seeing his son's bride, he had made several bitter comments about her skin color, loudly complaining that "a woman like that doesn't belong in our family."

Unfortunately for him, the bride had been standing just behind a partition.

And she wasn't alone.

One of her closest bridesmaids had been with her, holding an old family amulet said to have a particular talent for teaching arrogant people a lesson.

There had been a whisper of ancient words.

A flash of pink light.

Then darkness.

When Garfield opened his eyes again, his expensive suit was gone.

In its place was a tightly structured corset, a voluminous pink babydoll dress, and an absurd amount of long, perfectly styled dark hair decorated with delicate flowers.

He had barely managed to understand what had happened when the bride leaned close to his ear.

"Consider this a change of perspective, Father-in-law."

She smiled.

"Now you'll experience the wedding from exactly the place you deserve: serving the people you tried to put down."

And then she had pushed him toward the waiting bridal party.

Now Garfield stood beside the crystal-clear lake behind the reception venue, swallowing his pride while trying to figure out what to do with his new hands.

His nails were perfectly manicured.

A tiny straw purse hung from his wrist.

And the only people who knew the truth were Garfield, the bride, and the bridesmaid responsible for the spell.

To everyone else, he was simply a beautiful young woman who had somehow appeared among the bridesmaids.

That might have been embarrassing enough.

Unfortunately, Garfield still had to walk in those ridiculous high heels.

He carefully crossed the lawn, muttering curses under his breath as the heels tortured his unfamiliar feet. His new dress swayed around his legs with every tiny step, attracting admiring glances from guests who had absolutely no idea who was hiding underneath it.

Then he spotted his son.

Leo was standing near the bar, adjusting his tie and nervously scanning the garden.

He was clearly looking for his father.

Garfield's expression hardened.

Finally, someone he could talk to.

Taking advantage of a moment when the bride was busy with the photographer, Garfield marched toward his son. He pulled indignantly at the neckline of his pink dress, cleared his throat, and prepared to unleash the full authority of a sixty-year-old father.

Instead, a sweet, melodic voice came out.

"Leo! There you are. We need to deal with this ridiculous situation right now."

Leo turned.

He froze.

His eyes traveled from the long dark hair to the flowers, then to the pink dress, and finally to the beautiful young woman standing in front of him with an expression that somehow looked strangely familiar.

"Sorry... do we know each other?"

"What are you talking about, you idiot? It's me! Your father!"

Garfield crossed his arms, then immediately uncrossed them when he realized the movement was doing unfortunate things to the corset.

"Your fiancée set me up with that strange bridesmaid! I demand my rightful place at the head table. I'm your father! I paid for half of this wedding, and I'm not going to sit in the corner with the bridal party like some kind of plastic decoration!"

Leo stared at him.

Then he gave an awkward laugh and glanced around, clearly expecting one of his friends to jump out and reveal the joke.

"Look, miss... I don't know what kind of prank this is, or how much champagne you had before the ceremony, but my father is a sixty-year-old grumpy man who probably walked out of his own son's wedding because he's a bigot."

Garfield's jaw dropped.

"And you..." Leo continued, looking him up and down. "Well, you look like you belong on a runway."

"I am not joking, Leonardo!"

Garfield stepped forward and pointed an impeccably manicured finger at his son.

"Who taught you how to fish? Who gave you that gold watch for your graduation? I was turned into this! That woman you married cursed me!"

Leo stopped.

Something about that last sentence made him hesitate.

Then Garfield mentioned the watch.

A detail almost nobody knew.

Leo looked more carefully into those expressive brown eyes.

For just a moment, he saw something familiar.

That same irritated stare.

That same authoritarian expression.

That same look his father always gave him whenever he was about to deliver one of his famous lectures.

Leo's brain simply refused to process what his eyes were seeing.

He looked at the pink dress.

The flowers.

The straw purse.

Then back at those unmistakably familiar eyes.

"No."

He shook his head.

"No, no, no."

"My wife warned me there would be a few surprises today," Leo said slowly, forcing a nervous smile. "But this is taking the theater a little too far."

"This isn't theater!"

"If my father hired you to put on some ridiculous performance and ruin my wedding because he can't accept that I'm happy, you can tell him it didn't work."

Leo stepped backward.

Then he smiled politely.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, 'bridesmaid,' I have a wonderful wife to spend time with."

He pointed toward the bridal party.

"And your place is over there. With the other bridesmaids. Far away from my family."

Leo turned and walked away.

Garfield remained frozen in the middle of the garden.

His face burned with rage.

He wanted to shout.

He wanted to smash the nearest crystal glass.

He wanted to grab his son by the shoulders and make him understand who he was talking to.

Instead, he simply stood there in his pink dress, breathing heavily as the skirt puffed out with every furious breath.

For the first time in his life, Garfield's authority meant absolutely nothing.

Nobody saw an intimidating father.

Nobody saw the man who had paid for half the wedding.

Nobody even saw an angry old bigot.

They saw a beautiful young bridesmaid.

And, judging by the increasingly curious looks coming from the wedding guests, that was about to become another problem.

Because Garfield had survived being transformed.

He had survived being humiliated.

But now he had to survive an entire wedding reception while looking like the most approachable bridesmaid in the room.

And judging by the number of single guests already looking his way, he had a feeling the evening was about to get much worse.

Check out the most recent story: A Lesson in Manners: The Antique Fair Curse