jujube
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The turkey is still rock-hard frozen, so we put it in the dryer for two hours. All new guests are told that we are playing a cd of tribal drumming in honor of the First Thanksgiving. Everyone else starts a pool to bet on when the dryer will blow up.
Aunt Edna always says she's not coming, but she does anyway. We reassure her there are no oysters in the dressing and she eats it with great relish. She's claimed to be allergic to oysters for the last 30 years. For the last 30 years, she has eaten dressing with oysters and is still going strong. The person who was supposed to bring the cranberry sauce doesn't show up until two hours after dinner. We assure her we really didn't need the cranberry sauce and she shouldn't worry about it. She doesn't. She never does. We always have a couple of cans of cranberry sauce on hand. Uncle Bob's new 20-year-old trophy wife spends the meal counting carbohydrates and eats two lettuce leaves and a green bean that she has scraped the cream of mushroom soup off.
The 19-year-old Vegan cousin brings her own Tofurkey and cruelty-free veggies with her (did you know that vegetables actually feel pain when they are cut and should be eased "lovingly" out of the dirt? I didn't, either.) and spends the entire dinner muttering under her breath about the "Table of Death" until Uncle Joe tells her to put a sock in it. Aunt Edna gets into it with Aunt Rose about something that happened ten Thanksgiving ago, says she'll never darken our door again and goes home in a huff. She will be back in time for the left-overs at seven. The foreign exchange student from Khazakstan isn't sure what the hell is going on, but he figures that since all Americans are crazy, this is just normal. Grandma has been sprung from the nursing home for the day and has no idea where she is but she likes the food. The dog has found the garbage in the kitchen and yarks twice under the table.
After dinner, everyone usually goes into a coma. The lucky ones find a bed or a couch and sleep it off. Uncle Joe is sure he's having a heart attack (he's been sure of it annually since 1973); Aunt Rose gets the Pepto-Bismol and straightens things out. She refuses to drive him to the Emergency Room this year and he pouts the rest of the evening and says he's sure we're going to be sorry when he dies. Grandma doesn't remember that she's eaten and continually asks when dinner will be ready. Eventually, someone drives her back to the nursing home, where she tells everyone she went to some stranger's house for dinner and they didn't feed her. The guys convene to the family room for football watching; it usually gets heated and someone has to be threatened with not being invited next year if he doesn't calm down. The teens usually manage to snag a bottle of wine and hide in the basement drinking until somebody starts upchucking. The Vegan and the foreign exchange student from Khazakstan go out in the back yard and smoke pot. He's still pretty confused about the whole thing, but at least he's mellow about it.
Well, that's a compilation of about 50 years of Thanksgiving in my family. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. I sure hope I have.
Aunt Edna always says she's not coming, but she does anyway. We reassure her there are no oysters in the dressing and she eats it with great relish. She's claimed to be allergic to oysters for the last 30 years. For the last 30 years, she has eaten dressing with oysters and is still going strong. The person who was supposed to bring the cranberry sauce doesn't show up until two hours after dinner. We assure her we really didn't need the cranberry sauce and she shouldn't worry about it. She doesn't. She never does. We always have a couple of cans of cranberry sauce on hand. Uncle Bob's new 20-year-old trophy wife spends the meal counting carbohydrates and eats two lettuce leaves and a green bean that she has scraped the cream of mushroom soup off.
The 19-year-old Vegan cousin brings her own Tofurkey and cruelty-free veggies with her (did you know that vegetables actually feel pain when they are cut and should be eased "lovingly" out of the dirt? I didn't, either.) and spends the entire dinner muttering under her breath about the "Table of Death" until Uncle Joe tells her to put a sock in it. Aunt Edna gets into it with Aunt Rose about something that happened ten Thanksgiving ago, says she'll never darken our door again and goes home in a huff. She will be back in time for the left-overs at seven. The foreign exchange student from Khazakstan isn't sure what the hell is going on, but he figures that since all Americans are crazy, this is just normal. Grandma has been sprung from the nursing home for the day and has no idea where she is but she likes the food. The dog has found the garbage in the kitchen and yarks twice under the table.
After dinner, everyone usually goes into a coma. The lucky ones find a bed or a couch and sleep it off. Uncle Joe is sure he's having a heart attack (he's been sure of it annually since 1973); Aunt Rose gets the Pepto-Bismol and straightens things out. She refuses to drive him to the Emergency Room this year and he pouts the rest of the evening and says he's sure we're going to be sorry when he dies. Grandma doesn't remember that she's eaten and continually asks when dinner will be ready. Eventually, someone drives her back to the nursing home, where she tells everyone she went to some stranger's house for dinner and they didn't feed her. The guys convene to the family room for football watching; it usually gets heated and someone has to be threatened with not being invited next year if he doesn't calm down. The teens usually manage to snag a bottle of wine and hide in the basement drinking until somebody starts upchucking. The Vegan and the foreign exchange student from Khazakstan go out in the back yard and smoke pot. He's still pretty confused about the whole thing, but at least he's mellow about it.
Well, that's a compilation of about 50 years of Thanksgiving in my family. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. I sure hope I have.
It should be a nice day, I like her parents.
