Thanksgiving: One Man's Humble Account

By KYLE SHEARIN

Thanksgiving is not one of my favorite holidays.

For one, it’s sandwiched right in between Christmas and Halloween, which are both very tough to live up to. But what Thanksgiving has going for it is the food. It’s supposed to be the day you sit around with people who raised and scarred you for most of your life and truly give thanks you could see another year.

Also, there’s something about our early settlers getting together with our country’s native people to eat and not slit each other’s throats. You know, the small stuff we normally forget. It’s also the only time out of the year that you get to eat a large quantity of food and not think badly about it. Well, if you discount other holidays, birthdays, cook-outs, weddings, the super bowl, etc.

This year, I had my first real meal at my aunt’s house and it proved to be better than previous years. I don’t want to get too into my families personal politics here, but every year we get a big cookie, you know like the one’s in the mall that say “Happy Birthday” or “Screw Your Diet.” I guess; I don’t pay much attention to what is written on them.

But last year, there was no big cookie. Apparently one of our family members had a personal disagreement with our big cookie hook-up. Anyhow, the big cookie made its return this year much to this eater’s pleasure. Perhaps my favorite part of the day is when my family annually gatherers around the television and we watch millionaires run after and hit each other while tossing a brown ball.

My family is split in two three camps. Dallas fans, Washington fans, and that one guy who for some reason pulls for Miami. Yeah, I think he’s only related to us through marriage or something. I only had time to catch the Cowboys game, so I can only critique that specific sporting event.

Since I personally have been a Dallas fan for all of my life, I strangely have no recollection of the last two minutes of the game. So I’m left to assume that Dallas won and successfully defeated last year’s super bowl champs the New Orleans Saints. Perhaps my excitement and pleasure in them winning caused some sort of amnesia induced blockage to my brain.

After trying and failing to coax various family members to turn me over, I waddled to my car and drove home to try to eat what my mother prepared for us. Perhaps I have a complete bias for my mothers cooking since I grew up on it, but really, the day belonged to my mom’s cooking. From the turkey, ham rolls, stuffing, string-beans, pickled beats, yams, and everything in between, it was delicious. Although, it’s a little unsettling that the ham rolls were from Martins.

Also, where were the mashed potatoes? This is something that I didn’t take lightly.

But despite that unsettling disappointment, I still give her props for preparing a two-inch of thick caramel icing cake which never dissatisfies. After coming to from my sugar coma, I noticed it was nearing midnight and drove down to wal-mart to see how fat everybody in my old town had gotten since last year. Boy, were they fat.

All in all, this was a better than average Thanksgiving.

3 out of 5 stars.