When I was a kid, there were about 6 years where Thanksgiving and Christmas were these mystical days of family coming over to a place called Shady Dale and eating and kids playing. I can remember how happy I was then.
It was very much like the Norman Rockwell version, in fact, I remember my parents getting the Saturday Evening Post.
Skip ahead several lifetimes and the family gatherings are no more and all attempts to recreate them have failed... mostly for the lack of trying. Of course, there were a few divorces and family break ups by that point. Life wasn't as bad as all that. In some ways it was worse.
1) By my late teens, my father had taken the Africa Option and my mother had taken the America option. Divorce happened during that period of time.
2) Thanksgiving were more like the cartoon, uncomfortable with a blind desperation that they would be happy even if someone had to hold everyone at gunpoint to get them to sit down at the same table.
3) Somewhere, Michael was reclassified as damaged goods and my parents (who I believe loved me a lot but had trouble expressing it at times) started talking about me in third person.
Years passed and I found myself in college with my parents being mostly civil and even willing at times to sit at the same table. For me, nothing had changed much since the war years.1) Thankfully I was in therapy. I just wasn't very honest about it.
2) I didn't know how to respond to Michael as damaged goods
3) There were Thanksgivings where I was glad when my father couldn't make it or if I went to my father's, everyone forgot to ask about my mother more than once. Awkward silences abounded.
4) I kept dreaming that I would meet someone from a sane family and I would go to her parents' house for thanksgiving and pretend that I would be happy without my own.
One day I woke up and realized that I was, in fact, an adult. I had hit 40 and now everyone in my family would see me as a man and not as the son with depression, sleep apnea, overweight loser with a crappy job and no future. Never again would I have to sit through discussions like "what should we (my parents together or singular) do where Michael is concerned?"
I should have known better.
I am 44. I have a decent job that pays the bills and a little more now. I have a "house," and while it is not really a house, I own it. I have a car and while it won't get me far- it does get me far enough. I have my own life- erm, well I probably would have my own life IF I would stop letting my parents (who probably still have the best of intentions) from ruining every moment of happiness I hope to have.
I know that they don't mean to, but seriously-
when I tell you that it would have been nice for you to give me a heads up on Thanksgiving, that means a month's notice. Reasons I hate Thanksgiving for 2013.
1) When last minute airline tickets are $600 to $1000. Don't shoot me an email of Friday, November 22nd about what you are doing and how am I planning to get there.
2) When I come up with plan be don't start talking about a rental car option.
3) For the love of all that is Holy, do not involve my mother with money.
4) I am not a broken toy or autistic child.
5) I am an adult who can drive a car and get insurance from a Rental Agent and ask logical questions like daily mileage.
6) Yes I do have Sleep Apnea. Amazingly, I learned how to deal with it the last 7 years since I was diagnosed.
and
7) Next time it comes up tell me I am adopted because feeling like this sucks.
Thanksgiving, the day of eating as much turkey as your carnivorous hearts can bear!
On the other hand, Vegetarians and Vegans must be more reasonable people.... save for the coffee cup thrower. She did have really good aim though.
Michael top 10 Peeves about thanksgiving.
- When you idiot cousin says "How was your Turkey Day?" as if it had something to do with fun.
- Canned Cranberry sauce. I was almost permanently scarred by this sight, and would have never eaten it if it hadn't ended up on a deli sandwich. It's just so much Ew.
- It may have started at Plymouth Rock but it wasn't about communion with the Indians. By the time Thanksgiving was made a holiday, we were already massacring and working on genocide of much of the Native American population. I hate that for the Native Americans, but Thanksgiving was never about them except in some screwed up history books and videos. If I were an Indian I would go get my gun everytime somebody came around to apologize for it.
- Facebook. The lists of gratitude. I know that the women mean well, and that it is rewarding, but (there is always a but) some of the messages of gratitude are so wrong. My favorite one this year is about being grateful for family...I know that makes me look like an asshole, but I am part of that person's family and yet I didn't make the list. I deserved to be on that list. I hate the fact that it bothered me enough to include it in my list (I wonder if that's #5 actually). Also, some of the things would have been better to not- no never know about you being grateful for. Discretion sometimes is a lot better than honesty.
- Having to express gratitude before you eat -should you actually get invited to a Thanksgiving meal- I probably won't. I usually sit there trying to come up with something that will make me look as genuine as Cousin Andy- that is if Andy could limit himself to one thing and not cover the entire spectrum! I wonder how I am grateful for Deadpool would sound? Probably go better than last years... note to self never bring up Grandma's china again.
- Traveling: In the beginning Megabus was novel and uncrowded. Now it's dodge the pillow and avoid the conversation with the Hippie twins and try to limit eye contact with the girl who has decided I am her next stalker. Forget the planes, costs a fortune and the TSA always wants to stick their wand up my CPAP (look it up if you must know)- I have to breath out of that thing and I don't know or want to know where the wand has been. Trains cannot be reached without something else where I live but cost almost as much as the f**king planes. Cars are better if you like 466 mile trips in Interstate traffic and road construction and lemme tell you that the most seen scenic feature of road travel in the US of A is the construction barrel. You see one-you're going to see a million- maybe on the same road.
- What do you mean there was a parade? It is usually cold enough on Parade day to freeze your tatas- assuming you have tatas. Try to watch it on TV and get more off the subject commentary than sportscasters on Monday Night Football. Never mind the endless runs of commercials.
- Leftovers. If it's your house, you spend most of the meal planning on strategies for getting your guests to take home as much as they can carry. What is a good way to suggest that you help them load their car? If you are the guest, and you spot your host plotting or checking out the size of your handbag in time, you will reconsider how much you just complimented the turkey and consider escape routes from the house to your car. Sometimes "no thank you" falls on deaf ears.
- Football. As if the parade on TV wasn't bad enough.
- The Turkey. Oh how many ways the turkey can co wrong, so very, very wrong. The next time your sister-in-law insists that boiling it first is the best way to get in tender enough to be juicy- lock her in the closet and feed her slices of ham shoved under the door. Dry turkey requires lots of gravy unless you stepmother bricks the gravy again. Greasy Turkey, you might ask how this is possible? Well until you have met and spoken with my nephew Jerry for five minutes- take my word for it. Greasy Turkey avoid it or die trying. And lastly still frozen turkey, yes as hard as it is to believe dad, you cannot microwave everything
THANKSGIVING
Some people are lucky to have good humored families that are filled with loving thoughtful people who don't drop lines like "if you feel alone and need someone to come to your funeral- join a motorcycle club. I hear they are very loyal."
Or you luck out and marry into a family where the only football they care about it the touch football before the meal where everyone is nice and complimentary and don't shove you into Aunt Edna's roses while doing the happy dance over making a touchdown in Uncle Ross's tomato patch.
Then Thanksgiving can be yours again and you can eat to your hearts content without your mother crossing silverware and forbidding that second piece of pecan pie because it is not on the diet that you are on but that she has never even read about.
Such holidays should be cherished without your sister insisting that a 3 mile "stroll' is the best way to get a jump on losing all those calories and carbs you have just stuffed yourself with.
Here's to the three of you who have that.
Here's to the rest of us who live in dread that someone imported the family photo album to their iphone and will insist that your fiancee see each and every gluttonous picture that they have saved of you for this very occasion.
And that's Life according to Mike.
yes this is a picture of the 1621 "Thanksgiving"
notice how the Indians are mostly lower than the white peeps.
it's probably nothing but my imagination anyway.
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