Why Don't I Shut UP?

Happy Thanksgiving Blog...

Well, here we are again...Thanksgiving Eve. The night before the Great Turkey Holocaust. The day before we all prepare to gorge ourselves on mounds of food and overdose on family members that, under EVERYDAY circumstances, make us a little crazy.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving always ended up being somewhat of a spectator sport at my house. My family is one of the more...um...boisterous(?) families I know. You could be sure that, at some point, something comparable to a barroom rumble would go down. It got to the point where we started actually videotaping our dinner because we all knew someone was going to flip out at some point. No, i'm not lying!

So I looked forward to Thanksgiving like it was a World Fighting Championship title match cause I knew that someone (ie: one of my sisters) was going to end up flipping their wig and running out of the house. These were great moments for me....they were my "Kodak moments" if you will. The kinda moments that made you a little giggly and excited but sick in your stomach all at the same time. And it was always Thanksgiving.

Our family does a lot of stuff together...Christmas, The Great Halloween Pumpkin Carve-Off, July 4th...and usually they all go off without a hitch. But there is something about Thanksgiving in my family that just sets them all off. I don't know if its that sleepy turkey drug (triptofan?) or the stress of preparing a huge meal or coordinating the dessert trays...i don't know. But it turns nuts. I won't mention any names but at the height of drama, anonymous family members have been known to offer all sorts of threats involving:

1. The electric meat cutter
2. The Turkey baister
3. The Candle wand (you know that big clicky thing that you light candles with)
4. A butter knife
5. Something to do with a foot and "where the sun don't shine"
6. The lawn mower
7. Kicking dogs down steps (i wonder who that one came from??)
8. Kicking kids down steps
9. The gravy boat
10. And my favorite...Hot mashed potatoes and boxer shorts....

So that being said, Thanksgiving was always great when i was growing up...tons of material to work with. But somewhere down the line, my happy train came screeching to a halt. That all happened about the time I bought my own house. I still remember the horrible day like it was yesterday. We were sitting at my mom's dinner table discussing the upcoming holidays. Everything was fine. No reason for alarm. And, my then-girlfriend (now wife), still being the Witmer-Family green horn that she was, brought everything crashing down around me with one tiny sentence.

We could have Thanksgiving at our place.

I couldn't believe it...i heard the words coming out of her mouth in slow motion and still i could do nothing to stop it. Had there been food in my mouth, i'd be dead from asphyxiation. I sat there stunned as that sentence rolled off her tongue. I mean, what could I do? Pull a Steven Segal and hurl a butter knife at her head??

I imagined myself diving across the table in one of those action-movie slow-mo's screaming "noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!" as I flew through the air. But no...i just sat there, eyes big as saucers. And as my saucer eyes wandered from my wife to my mom I knew what had happened.

The damage was done.

My mom looked as if someone had just lifted a minivan off her and suddenly she was walking on the moon. I looked over at my step-dad and he smiled at me. It was the smile of a carnival barker who just took $5 from a kid to see the Amazing Toad Boy, knowing very well that it was just a kid with a couple warts. He's just passed the torch to me and I wanted to light him on fire with it.

I'd been duped. screwed. horn-swaggled. And suddenly, Thanksgiving was another one of those holidays I could just do without (like Christmas...sorry folks...can't handle that one either).

So this year, Thanksgiving is at my place. And YES, i'm going to put the video camera up in the corner of the dining room. And YES, I'm hoping for some more creative threats and a few stomping, angry feet. And with any luck, my dogs will survive the weekend without a single tumble down the stairs. .....

posted by Michael Witmer @ Wednesday, November 24, 2004