Wild Turkey Day
I believe it was after dinner, while our tummies set about the task of digesting glorious globs of Thanksgiving goodness, that Charles' Mom collapsed into a folding chair with a glass of white and an exhausted "Goddamn."
The woman had expertly marshaled 30+ rambunctious Thanksgiving Day guests through appetizers, two quickfire furniture rearrangements, an exceptional dinner, all the while making sure everybody was mingling, introduced, and intimately familiar with the well-worn path to the booze station. A break was due.
That was when I let slip the news that in my family, there's no drinking at Thanksgiving. There is turkey, there is ambrosia (don't ask, yankees), and there is sweet tea, but there is no booze and there is no carrying-on. She was appalled, her face a mix of pity and frightened wonder—the sort of look one might have had after the 2004 elections upon realizing that one's fellow citizens are inscrutable, damaged creatures.
Guys. It's so much better with the drinking.
You get a Thanksgiving featuring toasts such as "All Hail Jim Webb", "All Hail the Stuffing"; there are lascivious song & dance interpretations of "My Humps" by a doe-eyed seven-year-old [who was probably not drunk, but egged on shamefully by the rest of us. It's all funny until child protective services shows up.]; younger cousins suffer heinous atomic wedgies at the hands of the older; a grandmother gleefully proclaims that she was grandmother number 3, but has moved up in the seniority rankings after another grandma kicked the bucket. And Grandma number 1 (who had better watch her back) lords it up all over, announcing to anyone who cares to listen: "I am the matriarch!". I don't know about the rest of you, but I will probably procreate if only to be able to use that line before I die.
I probably should have had a few more drinks myself, but there were squirmy young cousins to lift up and swing around, and I didn't want to drop any on their heads, as did certain parties I could name. Thanks to the Grays for a virtuoso Turkey Day, although I'm sorry (I think) that there wasn't a repeat of last year's storied hot tub episode. Next year I'm bringing my bikini (just in case).
The woman had expertly marshaled 30+ rambunctious Thanksgiving Day guests through appetizers, two quickfire furniture rearrangements, an exceptional dinner, all the while making sure everybody was mingling, introduced, and intimately familiar with the well-worn path to the booze station. A break was due.
That was when I let slip the news that in my family, there's no drinking at Thanksgiving. There is turkey, there is ambrosia (don't ask, yankees), and there is sweet tea, but there is no booze and there is no carrying-on. She was appalled, her face a mix of pity and frightened wonder—the sort of look one might have had after the 2004 elections upon realizing that one's fellow citizens are inscrutable, damaged creatures.
Guys. It's so much better with the drinking.
You get a Thanksgiving featuring toasts such as "All Hail Jim Webb", "All Hail the Stuffing"; there are lascivious song & dance interpretations of "My Humps" by a doe-eyed seven-year-old [who was probably not drunk, but egged on shamefully by the rest of us. It's all funny until child protective services shows up.]; younger cousins suffer heinous atomic wedgies at the hands of the older; a grandmother gleefully proclaims that she was grandmother number 3, but has moved up in the seniority rankings after another grandma kicked the bucket. And Grandma number 1 (who had better watch her back) lords it up all over, announcing to anyone who cares to listen: "I am the matriarch!". I don't know about the rest of you, but I will probably procreate if only to be able to use that line before I die.
I probably should have had a few more drinks myself, but there were squirmy young cousins to lift up and swing around, and I didn't want to drop any on their heads, as did certain parties I could name. Thanks to the Grays for a virtuoso Turkey Day, although I'm sorry (I think) that there wasn't a repeat of last year's storied hot tub episode. Next year I'm bringing my bikini (just in case).
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