I like Thanksgiving because I enjoy eating the food. Really, that’s about it – pies, turkey, cranberry sauce … Family drama, football on TV, eating too much, etc. etc. and on and on, we all know the deal and how it goes. This year there is a little family drama but that’s okay, it won’t change my life. I haven’t had a Thanksgiving with my entire family since high school but we normally get my wife’s family in for a visit.
But not this year – back surgery means no traveling for a while for my father-in-law. This might be the first year that we might not have anyone in to visit … and then cooking and eating all that food seems really gluttonous. My recently crowned 6 year old daughter doesn’t like turkey so there will be some ham available – but ham is reserved for sandwiches and Easter. I can’t get excited for ham at Thanksgiving.
Maybe football will be interesting? I live in Dallas and the Cowboys are 2-7 so who knows … I can’t stand to watch bad football – particularly when it’s my team so rather than watch bad football I’d rather not watch anything.
.
This might be the year we create some new family memories – Thanksgiving always seems to be a catalyst for interesting stories. One of my memories of Thanksgiving was when I marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving day Parade in 1986. The high school I went to was invited to participate and we sold candles to help raise the money – yes, candles. I had never been to New York City before and I was pretty excited about going, all the really cool things I was going to see… yeah, that didn’t happen.
Our group activity was going to see ‘Rocky 4’ and me and a few other people thought that was a bad plan – we could see ‘Rocky 4’ in Dallas – so we pretended to be sick so we could stay in our rooms. Once everyone left for the movie, we left the hotel to do some exploring. It was exciting, exhilarating, it was going to be amazing, the things we were going to see!!
We saw chaperone’s…once we walked out the front door of the hotel. We were sent back to our rooms and told that we couldn’t leave the hotel anymore. <sad face>
Did you know that the entire parade is run through twice? Well sort of. Everybody who performs in front of Macy’s runs through their routine in the early, early morning hours to help the network determine it’s camera angles. We lined up at 2:30am and waited for our turn.
It was cold. Really cold
It rained. A lot.
I had to march playing the bells in the Drum Corp because no one else would do it.
They weigh like 60 pounds.
I weighed like 85 pounds.
I played ‘Turkey in the Straw’ like a billion times.
My socks were drenched and my toes were freezing – have you seen band shoes before? Not the highest quality product.
I don’t like parades anymore but can you blame me? Since I grew up in a warm weather climate, I didn’t realize that you shouldn’t stick freezing toes in warm water – which is exactly what I did the first chance I got. My toes got very swollen and I thought they were going to explode – they weren’t pointing straight out anymore – they were in more of a “fan” shaped pattern and looked like Vienna Sausages that had been left out too long – not awesome.
Yes, for me, Thanksgiving is more about the food and I plan on eating a lot of it – there will be room at the table if you’re available.
.
.
Today’s topic was brought to you as part of a series of “blog off” participants where several people are given a topic/ title and they all write on that topic. It is a fun exercise given the loose parameters that are established. If you would like to read the other entries in today’s topic, head on over to www.letsblogoff.com
