Assignment #1: Favorite Holiday

This unpleasant assignment was to write an essay about our favorite holiday.  We were still in the odious "power paragraphs" format my later English teacher despised.  

If you are a member of my family, might as well not read this.  Uh, the line between lie and truth in here is so subtle as to be difficult to distinguish at times...the result being that you might not like the way you're presented here.  Yeah, that's a good excuse.

This was the first time I outright lied in a paper, and it was a little scary.  But since there were absolutely no negative consequences, I started doing it more often.

Grade: 20/20

Thanksgiving is always an important time for me.  I love visiting my relatives every year.  They are the greatest, funniest people--in small doses.  Unfortunately, they also make the greatest, most fattening food.  Right around November first I start fasting in preparation for the big event.  However, I think I work off the dinner by laughing.  It's amazing how witty people can get after they've been stuffed full of turkey.  Even if I don't get any presents, Thanksgiving is still my favorite holiday.

Seeing all my distant relatives once a year is the best part of Thanksgiving--it makes me glad they're distant!  There's my wacky-but-lovable grandparents, Gramps and Nana, who are so nosy we don't even try to keep secrets from them anymore.  In fact, I think Nana knows more about my friends than I do!  Of course, each of my aunts and uncles has his or her own little quirks, too.  My aunt Nancy, for example, is a regular Martha Stewart, making everything from quilts to interior decorations from scratch; her husband Greg is a golf fanatic who locks himself away in his study all day to watch tapes of the U.S. Open.  But don't think that just because my cousins are closer to my age, they're any more normal.  One of them, Beth, is a piano prodigy, and her brother Tim is the original Lego maniac.  I love my family, but I think they're a little too strange to be seen more than once a year.

After everyone has passed hugs, kisses, and the flu around, it's time to eat--and eat and eat and eat... Aunt Jackie, who has four young sons, always brings a huge pumpkin pie--each of the boys gets to choose an ingredient to put in, like Cool Whip, nuts, or chocolate, so we never know quite what to expect.  Of course, Aunt Nancy kills and plucks our turkey herself, but she has a more grisly way of determining the gravy.  She sets various jars and bowls of sauce out in the yard and the last one the turkey hits as it's running for its life is the one that goes on the bird.  The year we ended up with mint jelly was the year I suggested Butterball.  No Thanksgiving would be complete without mashed potatoes, but my family can't even keep that simple.  My uncle Mitch, a true artiste, molds it into sculptures complete with food-colored accents--seriously, he's pretty good.  I must admit I eat better on Thanksgiving than on any other day.

My relatives do more than just eat and stare at each other, though--we have fun, too.  Everyone saves up their most bizarre stories to tell on Thanksgiving.  My cousin Matt, who works at a hotel, always has some hilarious tale about celebrity guests, panicking employees, or disastrous receptions.  His father Tom lives in Nashville and loves to share his favorite redneck jokes.  Uncle Tom can recite dozens of them at a time, much to the delight of the listeners.  Naturally, my younger cousins are willing to add to our list of funny stories by pulling outrageous stunts during dinner.  Upsetting an entire table of food or streaking through the neighborhood are events sure to be laughed over on succeeding holidays.  If I could write down just one hour of anecdotes at Thanksgiving, I could have the fastest-selling book in history!

Every Thanksgiving seems more enjoyable than the last.  When else could I see my extended family, most of which live miles away?  I might not want them next door, but I'd never choose to be completely isolated from them.  And I'd never give up that food--or that entertainment!  The more I look back on them, the more I remember how important those Thanksgivings are.