Thanksgiving Rundown

I had a total of three Thanksgivings. This is what happens when you have too many people who are important to you, but not to one another.

Thanksgiving number one was more a Thanksgiving luncheon than anything. There was a good deal of awkward standing around and attempting to help on my part, along with the occasional sly dodge of politics. I always assume everyone else's political views differ sharply from mine, and allow people to think they're exactly the same. It's not that I lie. I just don't correct assumptions that work in my favor.

"Boys are smarter than girls."

I looked up briefly, at Liam, an eight-year-old with Autism. High-functioning, but still autistic. The statement didn't bother me, for what I hope are obvious reasons: he's eight. When I was eight there were rhymes dedicated to the intellectual deficiency of the opposite sex. Ballads that spanned evenings in their telling, shared in merriment over mead and sweet meats. The rest of the table flipped out. I returned to my stuffing.

"Boys aren't any smarter than girls are."

"Yeah they are." He bore the adamant conviction of Jan Crouch, with a similar facial expression. "It's science. I read it in a book."

Now I started laughing. His parents were frantically trying to convince him that no, boys were not smarter than girls, that they are the same, that some girls are smarter than some boys, and some boys are smarter than some girls. It's different from person to person.

Liam was thoughtful about this barrage of new data. And this was all coming from his parents, the definitive source of all things Rational and True. They are a walking intellectual reservoir. "Well," he says, slowly, piecing the logic together, "I guess a girl dog is smarter than a boy fish."

Clearly. You have to pull back to the phylum to get distinctions in intelligence. It's just science. Quickly following this came another conversation which ended in: "Thanks, Grandma. Thanks for reminding me about my lost childhood."

Thanksgiving number deux saw my father incredibly drunk off of two cosmos. I pointed this out to my mother, who snapped at me, "Have you ever seen a grown man get drunk from two Cosmopolitans?" The answer to which is: yes, my father. In his attempt to explain to me the magic of ethanol and its stunning array of powers vis-a-vis one's synapses, he started muttering something about the color before downing the rest of the shaker.

The third Thanksgiving was simple, with probably the moistest turkey I've eaten in my life. The Guitar Hero was epic. Everything else was simple. I destroyed the game in the face of the rest of the group's button-pressing inadequacies. Someone yelled at me for beating their game before they did. I wish I had the self-preservation to be reticent, but Dragonforce came up on the screen shortly after.

Friday began as a different day. It ended in Everclear.

I discovered this and found it endearing, especially considering I've been unwittingly participating for the entirety of my life. Not as a protest statement or a desire to crush consumerism. I just hate crowds.