With Thanksgiving approaching it's a good time to see what traditions and stories we have from past Turkey Days. My family and relatives get together every year for the turkey, Uncle Bob's baked beans, and some Thanksgiving football. There has not been a Thanksgiving that I can remember when one of the older relatives hasn't told the story of the time they lost Uncle Renzo. Until recently Thanksgiving had always been celebrated at my grandparents' house, and it was tradition that after the feast everyone would battle for prime couch position on which to take the necessary post-dinner nap. One year before I was around, it comes time for everyone to leave, but there was one minor problem: nobody knew where Uncle Renzo was. Now, my grandparents' house wasn't all that big, so how they could lose a family member was quite perplexing to everyone. After searching all the rooms, the relatives are starting to worry, when my dad has the thought to look under the pool table. Lo and behold, Uncle Renzo was passed out under the table, happily snoring and without a care in the world. Apparently, with the lack of acceptable couch space, Renzo decided that underneath the pool table was the next best place to sleep. When he woke up he didn't get what the fuss was about, but without fail the story has been told every year since. Focus: My story sucks, but let's hear any stories or traditions you guys have from Thanksgiving.
Yeah, I'd much rather sit around the hockey shrub and give thanks to the McKenzie brothers for Molson and flannel than stuff my face and watch football with 4 downs. Be careful with that "pseudo" prefix, Glorious Leader. Or you'll be sawry.
Uncle Denny was really the black sheep uncle. Not the alcoholic uncle that leers at your sister once she starts to fill in, or the uncle that goes away for years on end showing up at your door needing cash. He was a priest, and was taken care of through his whole life. He never needed to really think or work for himself, so he was clumsy and absent minded. He once took the train from LA to Seattle and decided while the train was stopped to go get some peanuts. Rather than go to the dining car, he got off the train and walked across the concourse and go to the store, and stop into the bathroom. He bought his peanuts and saw the train rolling away, so he had to take a taxi 90 miles to the next stop to re board. Once he left the priesthood, he decided to be independent but it never really worked. When he was 83 he decided that he was going to come out to California for 3 weeks and stay with us for Thanksgiving. Now he was really on the skids, his parkinsons was kicking in, and he was losing his cognitive function. When my mom picked him up at the airport she found him standing there with a small carry on bag. She started to walk towards the baggage claim, he said "no need, I have everything here" pointing to his small bag. It turns out that he had only brought what he was wearing, and a change of underwear and socks, as well as his bible, so my mom had to go out and purchase a weeks worth of clothes for him. He also refused to use pajamas. And he got to take my bed. I made my mom go out and buy all new sheets and a comforter. One night he went to use the toilet, and somehow wound up falling into the bathtub and he couldn't get up. I was at my girlfriends house for the night, and so it was up to my mom and my other uncle, who is blind to pull up a naked old man covered in piss in the middle of the night. I think my blind uncle was the best off. So Thanksgiving morning comes along, and we are getting ready to start cooking. It is 8am, and we hear a large crash from the living room we go out there, and he is lying on the two steps that lead into our living room. He is bleeding like a stuck pig. You know how old people skin looks ready to fall off? Well his kinda did. He was bleeding all over the carpet, a chair, there was even blood on the wall. I had to run out to Rite-Aid and purchase enough bandages and gauze and medical tape to supply a MASH unit. The clerk looked at me strangely, probably thinking that the family feud started early that Thanksgiving. We managed to patch Denny up, and my mom had to spend a good part of the morning cleaning blood up off the carpet. She started drinking at 9am that morning. I had never seen her drink that early before or ever since. Thanksgiving ended up going well, but we had to send him home early. The last time I told this story on the old board several people asked how he even managed to get on the plane to LA. That is the amazing part. He flew Southwest from New Hampshire and had to change planes 3 times. I am amazed he didn't end up on a plane to Timbuktu.
I have an aunt who is notorious for being late to nearly every family gathering. Nothing out of the ordinary really, except last year she was late even by her standards. Everyone was else was punctual and we began mingling and drinkng as would be expected. Several hours and half a dozen bottles white wine later there was a clear divide amongst the population. The men were silently watching tv, reading, and shooting the shit; internalizing rage from the longer-than-usual interaction forced upon us by a tardy relative. The womenfolk, having laid waste to the chardonnay and now well into the red emotional stuff, were in the kitchen frantically placing calls to emergency services along any possible route she could have taken. My high-school aged female cousin, allowed to drink by her newly divorced "cool" mom, spewed a viscous red liquid all over a wall and on the sort of pristine white carpet only possible in the absence of kids, pets, meaningful life, etc. Things were looking looking up as this was already better than the 20ish years of monotony thus far. All had settled after putting the sloppy-drunk teen to bed and we gathered around around the kitchen to discuss starting without the inconsiderate bitch. The hosting aunt, very drunk and determined hold it together, placed a roll of paper towels next to a lit candle which very quickly worked its way up a lace curtain. The tallest, and perhaps drunkest (newly divorced aunt's boyfriend), among us wasted no time ripping down the curtain rod and smashing two plate glass cabinets as the hosting uncle scrambled for a fire extinguisher. Around this time the late aunt arrived; visibly intoxicated and minus one dumped-by-fiancee-on-turkey-day daughter. We collectively decided not to give her any shit and sat down to eat with almost every door and window open in the house. The next day I left early and hit a deer forcing me to visit the nearest open rental car place at a large international airport - the day after thanksgiving. FML just about summed it up as the state trooper and tow truck driver discussed what point buck I had "taken." This year I have arrangements with two family sides an hour and a half drive apart. Cool.
When we were kids, my (now a brain surgeon) sister practiced rocket science, and would spend weeks before thanksgiving building model rockets to shoot off in the cornfields behind our house with all of the cousins on Turkey Day. We have hours of videos of scale model space shuttles, apollo rockets, and ICBMs shooting hundreds of feet into the air, with about 10 kids chasing after them into the woods. I am the youngest of all the cousins, I turn 28 on Sunday, and finally, we have enough small kids around this year, to do this again. The cornfields have been turned into McMansions, but my parent's house shares yards with enough plots of <1 Acre to give us enough space to blow some stuff up. Nothing better than the sounds of pip-squeak voices counting down from ten before launching a rocket into the air. After last year's weak effort of my parents, sister, and I going to a restaurant for Thanksgiving, I'm thrilled to be able to do this again, plus I'm cooking the Turkey this year, so it won't be dry.
Thankfully most of my Holiday meals have been quiet affairs, mainly because (If you haven't gathered by now) many in my family are bat shit insane and locking me in a house with them would be akin to a putting a pissed off baboon in a room full of retarded children poking him with sticks. Only louder and with much more blood involved. One of the few I attended was my sister's first Thanksgiving meal that she hosted. She was still pretty much fresh off the boat from Thailand at the time and was still struggling with American food and the nuances of the English language. While dinner was cooking I asked her if she was going to make stuffing and she told me "The turkey already have stuffing when I bought it." The "Stuffing" was the neck and all the other horrible stuff they ram up the turkeys ass when they butcher it. Then as we all settled in to eating she was telling about a customer she had at work (She deals blackjack, or poker, or some damn thing in Vegas.) Her exact words were "He keep complain, complain, complain and would not shut his mouth, so I 69 him." This was just too much for me. I covered my mouth with my hands to keep the food in my mouth and bolted from my chair like an Olympic sprinter. Apparently none of my older and younger relatives caught her faux pas and I told them I'd accidentally bitten into a Thai death pepper that must have gotten mixed in with my serving. Everyone laughed at my misfortune. She obviously meant to say she "86'd him" and pulled her aside a little later to explain the relevance of her mixing up the numbers. Her whole face turned redder then W.C. Fields' gin blossoms which is probably not an everyday occurrence when you're Asian.
I have enough alcoholic Asian friends that I see Asian people turn bright red quite often. My family used to do enormous three-family dinners with family friends when I was a kid in Seattle, but as we've all gotten older, our Thanksgivings seem to get smaller every year. This year it's going to be me, my parents, my mom's sister, and her husband. My sisters aren't even making it; one's playing basketball at college in California and the other's on a term abroad in France. Which is ultimately fine with me; the less of an ordeal the whole thing is, the better. Plus, my mom's an excellent cook, so the less she has to focus on quantity, the better the food will be. The only real problem is that my aunt's husband* is completely antisocial and a total conversation killer, but meh. * I say "aunt's husband" instead of uncle because my cousins dislike him so much that they don't even call him their stepfather. Show of solidarity and all that.
One would think that having Georgia rednecks as relatives, I'd have at least one good story. But if something did happen when I was younger, I blocked it out. I loved Thanksgiving at my grandmother's tiny apartment, where she and my mom would cook up a ton of food and then the relatives streamed in periodically throughout the day so that grandma could make sure to force feed them as much food as possible. This year I'm going down to (a different part of) Georgia to meet my new husband's family. He and his sister have joked about their crazy parents. He told me that one time his sister asked them to bring a dish to the Thanksgiving meal she was hosting, and they brought a can of creamed corn. She told us we didn't have to bring anything since we're traveling, but I am bringing a baked-from-scratch apple pie and my husband is bringing a can of creamed corn. If his parents aren't as crazy as promised, I'll be pissed.
Don't knock the CFL there, friend. Yes, the players aren't as good as the NFL, but they're more manly. Worse weather, a bigger and longer field, 12 men on, every man in motion, no fair catches and NO sudden death overtimes. Not as skilled? Agreed. More exciting? FUCK yes. One year they had a game that was so cold and muddy the players taped THUMB TACKS to their hands to grip the ball. You don't see feather & fur jacket wearing megalomaniacal murderer Ray Lewis doing THAT shit. No the XFL? THAT was comical. Fourth-rate players the arena league wouldn't touch, with camera operators straight out of the Blair Witch Project. At tleast the cheerleaders were bonfide sluts.
I may as well retell this story from the old board. Up until I was 25 or 26 I thought I was an only child. It was about that time that my father told me I had at least one sister in southeast Asia. So for most of my life it was my mother and I together for holiday meals and we didn't have much money, and seriously what is the point in putting on a big holiday meal if there is only two of you? One Thanksgiving we had our usual instant potatoes with Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup for gravy, but my mom had fixed the most wonderful ham for our main course. It glistened like the sun shining off wet rocks, had cloves stuck in it and was bathed in honey. It was delicious. One thing puzzled me though...how did mom find such a tiny ham for the two of us? She sheepishly replied that it was Spam. Mom was a crappy cook, but she took hours preparing that loaf of Spam and fooled me into thinking she's found a mini ham for our dinner. While others were gouging themselves on turkey and all the trimmings my mother and I ate a loaf of Spam and I'll bet we were more thankful for that loaf of Spam then anyone having a huge meal.
Thanksgivings in my family usually involved us going over to my stepmom's mom's house (so...step grandma?) with all the extended family for the big meal. She would request that everyone get there at 4 o'clock, but she would never serve the fucking food until at least 7. This infuriated my father to no end, since he grew up eating Thanksgiving dinner at like... 2 or so. So he would sit quietly downstairs with me and my step-brother and mainline budlight while we played 1 on 1 football for three hours. We would always break something significant (vases, chairs, fancy dishware, etc...), but my Dad never said a word to anyone about it. I remember the first time it happened he just looked away and said, "I didn't see nothing" followed by cursing and mumbling, "what else the bitch expect, make everyone starve for hours..." Finally when I was 15 my Dad put his foot down. Said we were having Thanksgiving that year at our house, get there by 2, we eat at 3, anyone that wants to come can come. Everyone in the family ended up coming, and it was much, MUCH better. Then again, I remember sneaking a twelve pack of beer out to the shed with my stepbrother and cousin that year and pounding them while smoking a joint, so maybe that is what made it better. It was even funnier later on when everyone realized we were fucked up and my Dad, basking in the glow of his holiday victory and extremely drunk, said, "Ah well, it's Thanksgiving. The boys are old enough to have a few beers on the Holidays." He was so stoked with getting his way on Thanksgiving, I could have sat in the living room shooting up heroin and he wouldn't have cared.
My cousins and I were just talking on Facebook about our creeper cousin, Greg. There was a regular tussle amongst the female cousins to avoid sitting next to him. At least 20 years older, still sporting a 1970s porno hairstyle (and this was the late 1980s), he'd sit next to us, try to grope our prepubescent thighs, and brag about his newest pets, including a monkey. The best year was when he and his mother got into a verbal, and then physical brawl, about his then-girlfriend, the stripper. It still holds a mythic level of family drama for all of us. When we think about the things we're nostalgic for: my grandma's rolls, my uncle Ken's removable teeth, my mom's famous apple pie, the one thing we can all agree was truly memorable about our childhood holidays was my creepy cousin Greg.
I hated stuffing for about the first ten years of my life. I remember one Thanksgiving, when I was about 7 or so, telling my grandma that if I was forced to eat the crap that I would throw it up [not on purpose]. That stuff gave me a gag reflex, the texture was just so gross to me at that age. Lo and behold, I was forced to eat the crap, and I threw up all over my pants. My dad got pissed and my grandma was the one who had to help clean me up. I remember saying something along the lines of, "See? What did I say? I TOLD you I would throw it up!" My close cousins videotaped nearly every family gathering from the mid 80's til about a few years ago. Awhile back, I uploaded a hilarious snippet to YouTube of my older brother [who is now involved in politics] discussing the kinds of jobs he would want to do when he was older. He was eight at the time: If you don't want to watch the video, here's a partial transcript: Matt is my brother Linda and Eric are the older cousins Mario is my older brother Rita is my aunt Matt: One thing I don't want to be, two things I don't want to be, I mean three. Three things I don't want to be. Linda: What three things don't you want to be? Matt: I don't want to be a cop because I'd get beat up, and it's hard work. I don't want to be in fire department because it takes too hard, and I don't want to be a doctor. Linda: Why wouldn't you wanna be a doctor? Mario: Because he's stupid! Linda: What do you want to be? Matt: A ninja Linda: You can write ninja books or you could draw ninjas... Matt: I'm not a very good drawer. Linda: No, you're really good! Matt: No, I go out of the lines. Rita: But by 27 you'll be good. Linda: Yeah by 27, you'll be practiced. Eric: How about being a lawyer, or a judge or something? Matt: Nah, too hard. Eric: Too much reading, huh? Matt: And I don't know anything about being a judge. Eric: By the time you're 27 I will be old and I could need your help. I would pay you to work for me. 7 bucks an hour? Matt: I'm hecka strong. I'd work, and you'd hafta pay me? With dollar money? Eric: Dude I'd pay you more than a dollar, like seven dollars an hour. Matt: I'll do that! But when I'm 27 I won't remember...