Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving's around the corner. I've already had my Thanksgiving dinner, of course. What's your excuse? Honestly, keep up.

Thanksgiving has always had warm memories for me, memories cast to obscene Christmas music and the creamy orange of candlelight against stucco walls. But, more noticeably, these memories come with the pain of stomach aches. Sweet delicious stomach aches.

It seemed as if every year my parents invited neighbors or friends I should have known by then but never could manage to remember. I would have met them dozens of times before and greet them at each Thanksgiving with a quizzical expression, as if to say "Oh? It seems as if more old people have wandered into the house again." And then they would shake my hand and say, "Why, look what a handsome man you're turning out to be! You remember when I was present at your birth and blah blah bluh, blurdy blur?"

At which point I would just smile and shake my head, because I have made it a point to never lie in my entire life. Besides, even if I offended them they would undoubtedly fail to remember it ten minutes later. Since they are old.

Thanksgiving Day was mainly spent fasting and watching my mother make all the food by herself. I found the worry and frustration she poured into her work only made it taste that much better. There was the turkey, of course, but there was the stuffing which I could eat forever. Like, if I was stuck on a desert island with only stuffing to eat, I would be totally cool with that. It would also be nice to have, I don't know, a chimpanzee for a best friend, too, since I'd be the only person on the island. And we would lounge around all day eating stuffing and listening to reggae. And on the weekends, or maybe midweek too, we'd get into various shenanigans like tick off the orangutans of the other side of the island and steal their butter or something. I haven't planned this all out yet; retirement is still a ways off.

The chimpanzee's name will be Fred, I think.

Anyways, sometimes there was honey-glaze ham from pigs my father slaughtered in the garage (he has a rough sort of affinity with animals and pets) and always there would be a platter of green beans with minced bacon and mushroom, since everyone knows vegetables are inferior unless mixed with bacon. Yams, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce were also created to appease the memory of our white ancestors killing and raping to take what God gave us (He chatted us on facebook, said it was totally cool).

And, most importantly, there was gravy. This we kept in a white pitcher, our own little porcelien vase of MSG. Things to pour gravy on: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, ham, green beans, yams, cranberry sauce, chimpanzees. Everything tastes better with gravy. One year we just drank straight gravy in shot glasses, but dad got really messed up on the gravy and mistook one of the guests for a pig (my mother later took me aside when the squad car pulled up the drive way. "Just this once," she told, "lying would be a sort of awesome thing to do, 'kay?").

Following all of this would be wine and pie, which was fine for the most part since there was a huge mirror on the wall in the dining room in which my sister and I would stare while the old people talked. My sister would admire herself with winsome smiles while I, across the table, would have to crane my head to look over at my shoulder and immediately struggle with my own reflection and what it meant--I look so different than how my mind perceives my soul, is this me, God I'm really growing up aren't I, boy I ought to figure out what I'm doing for the rest of my life, wait a tick why am I meant to exist anyhow, damn my hair looks good--before turning back to my wineglass of gravy.

I suppose I should give less praise to gravy and more to the centerpiece of Thanksgiving, the turkey. But there always seemed to be more white meat on the turkey we ate (healthy) instead of the dark meat which I enjoyed immensely (not so healthy). Besides, next to everything else that was offered for dinner, white meat just...paled in comparison. And before you ask yourself if turkey meat can actually feel jealous, here's the answer: yes. A terrible and resounding YES.

My discovery to said question took place on the Thanksgiving of Mr. McKingley's death (the unfortunate man mistaken to be a pig). My mother told me to keep an eye on the turkey in the oven and baste the cheesecloth when it dried while she and my sister spoke to the policemen outside (my father had passed out on the bathroom floor, covered in blood that would stain his clothes and gravy that would stain his heart). My mother and sister checked the switchblades in their boots and left me alone with the turkey.

I, the dutiful son, basted the turkey from time to time before returning to my seat on the kitchen floor to drink apple cider. I had gone through almost half the entire bottle before I heard a squelching noise emit from the oven.

If you have ever heard a headless turkey sit up in its own juices quaking with fury then you would recognize this noise. I looked up in time to see the oven door kicked open by the turkey's widdle turkey foot stub. Before I knew it, the turkey was upon me, scalding my face with its widdle wings pressed against my cheeks.

"Put down that baster," it told me quietly.

I put it down. I'd been in rough situations before with my gorilla sidekick Cookie, but nothing quite like--

"Shut up, you jiveturkey!" the turkey said. The turkey's name, as it so happens, was Mistah Fly James. "If I catch you doing an internal monologue again, so help me I will baste you where cheesecloth won't reach. Now things are gonna change around here, dig? The Man ain't gonna keep me down, no sir. You got your green beans with the bacon, you got your cranberry sauces, you even got your gravy. But what about me? Huh? I didn't ever get respect from you even though I'm a righteous turkey. You want dark meat, is that it?" Mistah Fly James leaned close to me, where his head had once been. Now there was only a jagged hole full of a hatred black enough to suck color around it. Also, delicious meat. "Honky, I'll show you the darkest meat there is."

And then there was the sound of a portal in time being rent open (which is a lot easier to recognize than squelching turkey hatred noises, actually, I'd heard it once before in Brazil, it sounds a lot like "Shilo" by Neil Diamond, weird I know) and a chimpanzee in shades and a Hawaiian shirt stepped through with a shotgun clacking in his grip.

The chimpanzee spoke in a clipped British accent around a cigar. "That sounds a lot like fowl play to me."

I don't know if it was the shotgun blast or the bad pun, but Mistha Fly James exploded and turkey bits splattered the kitchen. In my shock, I picked out the pieces of dark meat and began to eat them.

"Fred?" I asked around a mouthful of blaxploitation turkey.

The chimpanzee nodded solemnly.

I took this to be good news. It looked as if I would manage retirement after all. "So how'd you know to save my life?"

"Well," Fred said, removing his cigar to blow a smoke ring in that recognizable monkey O-face, "your future self made a time machine and due to complicated time paradoxical reasons that probably don't make sense, sent me back in time to stop the zombie turkey which the dark wizard He Who Must Not Be Named revived in order to kill you, your younger self."

"Oh," I said. "So, Voldemort is the dark wizard, right?"

"No."

"David Bowie?"

"No."

"Well I can't very well guess He Who Must Not Be Named just by going through names. Can you describe him for me?"

"No. He Who Must Not Be Named is also He Who Must Not Be Described."

"Well," I said, "that does sound awfully serious."

Me and Fred ate some stuffing, exchanged insurance information, and then Fred returned through the schism in time, having saved my life and teaching me the first valuable life lesson he would ever teach me: Thanksgiving with murderous zombie turkeys and time traveling apes with shotguns beats, by far, listening to old people talk and talk and talk.

Y'know, I learned something today. Even though they may be unpleasant to both sight and smell, and even though they may not have stories of dark wizards and time paradoxes, old people do have rich stories to tell. The older generation can bestow onto the younger a unique perspective from a different era and still impart a universal truth and emotion, perhaps not in order to cleanly prevent mistakes like time travel does, but in order to make you say, one day, "Ohhhhhh, so THAT'S what that old guy was blah blah'ing about. Sure could've saved me from this felony had I understood at the time what he was trying to tell me." This is valuable stuff here, kids, pay attention.

Also, gravy is delicious.