I don’t like gravy, you guys.
I’m sorry — I just don’t. And yes, you’re right, I’ve never actually tried it, but with a hue hovering dangerously close to se(w)a(ge) green, do I really need to?
And it’s not as if the smell helps its cause any, either. But it’s not just the gravy, you guys; it’s the sweet potatoes, the inexplicable stuffing crudely jostled into the carcass of a beheaded turkey, the pumpkin pie and the cranberry sauce unceremoniously plopped onto a saucer from a can.
Like a Native American cringing at the kids’ table of the first Pilgrim feast, Thanksgiving and I just don’t mesh very well.
I sometimes think back to how it all started, with Pocahontas breaking the first bread of the holiday with Pilgrims like Christopher Columbus and … that other guy. Back to the good ol’ days when Indians agreed to stop scalping the heads of wandering settlers, if only for a long weekend, and the native British halted their methodical subjugation of sacred land in the name of the king. Has there ever been a more noble foundation from which a holiday was birthed? I think not.
And yet somehow, every year when my extended relatives gather around the overflowing cornucopia centerpiece for one lavish meal, I find myself perpetually at the kids table, not having a good time. And it makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with me, if I’m somehow un-American or anti-family.
But I’m not. I love my 102-year-old great-grandmother; I love her more than anything. I just don’t look forward to flying 3,000 miles across country to sit at a shortened 4-by-4 folding table attempting to hold a conversation with someone whose attention span has now deteriorated to goldfish levels. And I love my cousin, but I’d rather not be on “choke alert” all night, as he tests the limits of his trachea with ever-increasing sizes of turkey slices. Does that somehow make me less patriotic?
Sacajawea said it best when she said, “This Thanksgiving stuff is nonsense.”
Now I had a hard time actually locating that official quote, but if you’ve ever seen “Almost Heroes” or her face on the back of a coin, it’s safe to say that statement’s not too far from her line of thinking.
Where do I turn? Where do I find solace on this sacred Thursday in November when everyone else is flooding social networks with adoration of feasting, fellowship and football? I wish more than anything that my neuroticism wouldn’t lead me to stare apprehensively at the buffet before me, scanning for things I’d actually eat. But these were the cards dealt to me, cards that say I’d rather eat Chick-fil-A than yams.
Nevertheless, I’ll still be there, traversing the hectic lines at LAX, rushing to catch my flight home so that I can sit at the table annex 10 yards away from the rest of my family, awkwardly poking the mush on my plate, staring blankly into eternity, monitoring my great-grandmother’s inadvertent drooling, hoping that, for whatever reason, this year we exchange presents.
God bless the USA.
