The Laws Of Thanksgiving, 2007 Edition

Last year, my post entitled “The Laws of Thanksgiving” garnered a lot of e-mails and linkage. So, I thought I’d reprise it with, of course, some 2007 editions. Since this is becoming a tradition, last year’s “laws” are first, followed by those for 2008:

The Laws of Thanksgiving, Codified 2006:

Every Thanksgiving, we realize that there are certain things that are bound to happen. Over the years, I’ve mentally compiled many of my Thanksgiving experiences and determined that these things are, in fact, laws of nature. They will happen.

So, without any further ado, the Laws of Thanksgiving.

No matter how many pies you make, you will always have failed to make the one type of pie your pickest and bitchiest guest will want.
No matter how good your dressing is, someone will always announce that their mother’s/grandmother’s is better even though your recipie came from your grandmother. You can counter this by hiring the elderly lady from down the street to hide in a back bedroom and walk out in the middle of the Thanksgiving meal to fill a plate. Totally ignore her, and when someone asks, “who’s that,” just reply: “Oh, that’s my Grandma. Her ghost shows up when people diss her stuffing recipie.” After you say this, the elderly lady should make a ghost-noise. Make sure you pay slip the elderly lady a $50 for her services.
Even if you tell everyone you invite that it is not necessary for them to bring any side dishes or desserts, they will always bring something that (a) clashes with the menu and (b) which they demand to set on the dining room table, disrupting the table setting you worked on all morning.

If you go to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving, and they announce that their friends or cousins are coming over with their kids, at least one child present will be a 16-year-old who is carrying an illegitimate child and has brought the baby’s dad along. The baby’s dad will be listening to “Sexyback” on an iPod, wearing a tee shirt, and take both legs off the turkey.

It’s always best to have some nice, cheap Sutter Home wines on hand for Thanksgiving. This way, when no one is looking, you can fill the glasses of the uninvited guests, family you hate, and others, with cheap ass wine and save the good stuff for yourself and those you truly care about.

Pumpkin pie does not travel well on a plane.

If you are going on a long trip and take your already baked desserts, some jackass sitting in the back seat will eat at least half a pie.

No matter how much you pay to attend a Thanksgiving Buffet at even the toniest of establishments, the mashed potatoes will taste like they belong in a nursing home cafeteria.

The casinos at Shreveport are always packed at Thanksgiving.

Keep a small bottle of your favorite hard liqour in the spice cabinet in the kitchen. That way, when everyone in your house is in your kitchen trying to tell you how their mother used to cook whatever it is you’re cooking, you can take a swig for sanity preservation. And, if the extra cooks get on your nerves too much, you can smack them with the bottle.

Whatever falls on the floor while you are cooking belongs to the dog. If you do not have a dog, borrow one so that they can eat what you drop, preventing you from having to bend over too frequently.

If you try to serve something classy like Cornish Game Hens, some idiot will always say, “what, no turkey?” Luckily, Cornish Game Hens are just small enough that you can throw one across the table at head of the offending guest with no lasting brain damage.

You can never have too much green bean casserole. Never. Ever.

If you decide your guests are worthy of your grandmother’s silverware, some idiot will always ask, “why are there so many forks and spoons?” Accidently throw a turkey leg at them.

No matter how many cans of cream of mushroom soup, evaporated milk, and broth you buy, you will discover that you need one more on Thanksgiving morning.

If you want to know what Hell is like, go to Wal-Mart the night before Thanksgiving and hang out in the grocery section. Better yet, try to find the Karo Syrup and cornstarch–go ahead, I dare you.

If you cannot find a particular item at the store during the rush of your Thanksgiving grocery shopping trip and also can’t find any store staff, slowly walk up and down each aisle staring straight ahead repeating loudly (and with crazed eyes) the name of the item you are seeking. Trust me, if you  walk up and down four or five aisles moaning “Karo Syrup! I need Karo Syrup!” an associate will quickly find it for you.

Whatever nice outfit you picked out for your Thanksgiving dinner will be ruined by dessert. Either you will spill gravy on it, someone’s child will spit-up on your shoulder, or a three-year-old will smear pumpkin pie on your pants.

No house has enough ovens to cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner.

If someone brings a dish to your Thanksgiving lunch and proudly announces that it was prepared entirely in the microwave, accidentally bump them while they are carrying it and then make them pay to have your carpets cleaned.

The best hash brown casserole is always found in the most humble of surroundings.

Keep a couple of cans of cranberry sauce on hand even if you make it from scratch. If you prepare real cranberry sauce, some jackass will complain that canned is better. Announce that you have a can you’ll gladly open and serve, and then accidentally drop it on their foot.

There is always one guest at Thanksgiving Dinner who would prefer to eat dinner in front of the television. As punishment, make sure that the kid’s table with the loudest, most obnoxious children is set up right in front of the TV.

If you serve your dinner buffet style, there will always be a child who walks through the entire line with their mother with nothing but mashed potatoes on their plate because everything else “looks gross” and they “don’t like turkey.” Tell them they can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if (a) they can find where you keep the peanut butter, and (b) if they can make it themselves on the back porch because it will make too much of a mess in the kitchen. They’ll quickly realize they love squash casserole. It helps if you have a large doberman sitting on the back porch.
If you have a dog, it can come in very, very handy on Thanksgiving. When one of your relatives complains about the food, that you didn’t make a certain dish, or that something doesn’t taste like it should, tell them you’ll take care of it. Gently whisk away their plate (with a smile), call the dog into the room, and present the dog with the plate. Then tell the guest, “sorry, no seconds until after dessert!”

If you’re tired of your uninvited distant family members inviting themselves to your Thanksgiving dinner, invite four or five local prostitutes to share your meal with you and tell your family it’s part of your church’s ministry. Your family will probably never invite themselves back.

Someone’s child, spouse, or boy/girlfriend will always show up and announce that they are “vegitarian.” Grab a can of green beans, open them, and grab a fork. Present this to your vegit guest (in the can) and say, “that’s ok! I’m prepared!” Then, announce to your meat-eating guests, “Isn’t this turkey great? I went to that new grocery store where they let you kill it yourself.” [Editor’s Note: This was meant to be funny, not offensive; some of our vegan colleagues got mad at me last year over this one, so I want to be clear on that. Capitol Annex-hearts-vegans.

It’s inevitable that someone at your Thanksgiving dinner will announce they’re on a diet and can eat nothing you’ve prepared. Announce, “That’s ok! I prepared a separate dinner for the dieters!” and hand them a packet of Splenda and a straw. Tell them they are welcome to enjoy their dinner in the garage or bathroom so they aren’t tempted by the other foods.

There will always be someone at your Thanksgiving dinner for whom even a mere glass of wine is far too much. They’ll either be laughing like a 12-year-old school girl or telling jokes worse than Kinky Friedman. It is not inappropriate to slap such people silly.

Never bring business cards to Thanksgiving dinner and if you do, don’t hand them out. Why? Because no matter what your occupation, someone at the dinner who you’d prefer to never see again will need your services and want them for free because they met you at their cousin’s Thanksgiving meal. For example, if you’re a lawyer, someone will have a kid with a DWI. If you sell lumber, someone will want a load for free for a new shed.

As an addition to the above, never tell people you don’t know your real occupation at a Thanksgiving dinner because they’ll immediately decide they need your help. If you’re a banker, they’ll want you to hook them up with a loan; if you are an electrician, they’ll need a house rewired (for free). Just tell people you are a “consultant.” If they are smart enough to ask “what kind of a consultant,” reply with something like, “I consult with the principals in the nuclear power plant industry to help them assess their risks, needs, and future development with regard to federal deregulation of various aspects of the industry.” They’ll immediately decide you are too boring and move on. If they act interested and you can’t keep faking it, spill something (if you are at someone else’s house) because that always stops a conversation.

When the meal is over, you will likely want everyone out of your house. However, chances are they’ll want to plop down and watch football while spilling beer and pumpkin pie all over your sofa. To prevent this, before dinner, descretly  disconnect your cable or DirectTV. When someone turns on the TV and sees static, casually announce, “Oh, our receiver went out and they won’t be here until Friday to fix it. We don’t have cable anywhere in the house! That’s OK though because I rented old black and white movies from the 40s for us to watch!” Your house will clear out within minutes.

It’s always tempting to use family heirloom linens  on the dining room table at Thanksgiving. After all, that’s what they are there for. However, if there are any children that will be present, resist the temptation. Even if the kids are at another table in another room, someone will run to their mommy because cousin Johnny called them a name and smear gravy on the tablecloth.

For at least the day of Thanksgiving, everyone loves leftovers. However, if you have a lot of company, you may not have any leftovers left to enjoy after everyone has had seconds. To prevent this problem, let everyone serve themselves (or serve them) and immediately whisk the remaining food away to the fridge, etc. Guests usually will not ask you to get it back out. If they do, announce that you pledged the leftovers to a homeless shelter and that they’ll be picked up in a few minutes.

Someone will always show up to Thanksgiving dinner sick with a contagious illness–like Flu. Put them at the kids table–everyone expects them to get sick in the winter anyway.

No matter what your political affiliation is, someone at your Thanksgiving dinner will want to argue with you over politics. After they’ve said one or two things, simply reply, “Well, you’ve convinced me. Your political party really is a bunch of assholes.”

If your family isn’t in the habit of saying ‘grace’ before meals, some guest will usually be somewhat offended by that and loudly ask, “aren’t we going to bless the food.” If the guests in question are protestant, announce that the Rabbi came by this morning and already did that. If the guests in question are Jewish, announce that a Catholic priest came by earlier and already did a blessing. If the guests are Baptists, tell them that the local Methodist minister already came by and did it while they were in the bathroom. If the guests are Methodist, just offer them more wine.

If your family is in the habit of saying ‘grace’ before meals and some rogue digs in before you have the opportunity to do so, loudly announce, “Well, I guess we’ll have to bless every plate here but yours!” Other good announcements include, “excuse me, but those of us here who aren’t heathen would like to give thanks to God,” and “excuse me, but I am afraid that some of this food might be undercooked, so if you don’t want e-coli or salmonella, you’d better spit that out and pray with the rest of us.” Good blessings to offer in such situations include: “Lord, please bless those of us who had the patience to wait for this prayer and condemn the rest of these sinners to Hell, amen.”

Someone will always be a “downer” during dinner by starting to cry when some other relative mentions another relative who has passed on. Interrupt and say, “yes, it’s sad, but you can bet if our late (insert name of relative that brought this on here) was here, she’d tell you to shut the hell up and eat the rest of your green bean casserole.”

The Laws Of Thanksgiving, Codified 2008

From year to year, beyond your control, your local discount retailer will carry a different selection of canned pie fillings (mostly not the ones you wanted) and move them to another part of the store where you cannot find them.

If you walk down a grocery store isle with marshmallows or sugar during the three days before Thanksgiving, the sugar isle will be packed, someone will always be unloading more sugar, and there will be sugar all over the floor. The Marshmallow aisle will always be packed with people who cannot survive a single holiday without some concoction of sweet potatoes.

The vet where you have boarded you pets for the last three years will lose your reservation the day before you are supposed to bring your pets there, leaving you screwed.

Fifteen minutes before you are set to leave on your holiday trip, you’ll get an email that requires three phone calls, a fax, and a .pdf file you haven’t created yet to be sent to at least six different people before you walk out the door.

The second you sit down to your Thanksgiving meal one of two things will happen: some child will ask for ketchup for his or her turkey, and a relative you could care less about will call and want to talk for 20 minutes and have you say hello to all six of her children, none of whom like to talk on the phone, and none of whose names you will be able to remember.

The guest bathroom always runs out of toilet paper about 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving day.

Some jackass will ask you if there will be chips and dip for the game following the meal. Tell them, “yes! In the middle of preparing this entire meal and cleaning the house, I ran out and bought Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion Chips,” and then stick your tongue out at them.

Someone will ask if their children can eat in the bedroom while playing video games. As visions of your DKNY comforter covered in cranberries and gravy come to your mind, resist the temptation to be accomodating.

During dinner, someone will always ask you “whatever happened to…” and you will have no idea who they are talking about, but they’ll expect you to know. Three acceptable replies are: “They have passed on,” “I haven’t heard from them since they joined that new church…what was it, the Branch Dividians?,” and “Las time I heard from that person, they said something about ‘Columbia,’ ‘nose candy,’ and a single-engine plane. I don’t know what that was about.”

The layered desert you make every year with pudding, cherries, whipped topping, and all that jazz goes in and out of fashion by the year. Some years, people will love it. Other years, they’ll hate it.  In the years where they hate it, tell them, “well, you don’t need it anyway. You’ve put on more than a few pounds over the last year.”

Every Thanksgiving, one of your relatives will end up mentioning to you that they have moved their rugrats into “private” school because they just weren’t happy with a teacher or the education system in general, or whatever. Always reply, “as dumb as they are, do you think it will make a difference?”

Sometimes, even the best cooks can screw up in the kitchen. On occasion, one might even ruin an entire dish with the wrong ingredient or through overcooking. Don’t throw it away or feed it to the dog! Set it out in the buffet line first so that your unwelcome guests can heap their plates full of mashed potatoes with cinnamon instead of pepper or green bean casserole that you accidentally loaded with sugar instead of salt. Then, before your family goes through the line, pull out the one made correctly.

When guests star to overstay their welcome into the evening, start frantically looking out the windows. When they ask what is wrong, just casually say, “Oh, there has been a serial killer loose in the neighborhood. He came to the door last night and said he’d be back tonight, and I’m just waiting for him to show up. I thought we could all jump on him and catch him and hold him until the police arrive. Won’t that be fun?”

If you don’t like your guests overstaying their welcome, make your home temporarily uninviting, if not frightening (especially for the kids!). Graphic prints of the crucifixion (you can get one at a flea market–cheap); large, framed portraits of a scowling old people; photos of Tom DeLay on every surface that will stand still; and anything from your local Wicca or voodoo shop should do the trick.

Some idiot will always load up their plate with heaps and heaps of food and then end up eating only about four bites. Immediately confront them and ask why they didn’t just go through the buffet line with a toothpick.

As gastric bypass and stomach stapling become more and more vogue, this year you may be confronted with a guest who has undergone one of these surgeries and can eat only about four teaspoonfuls of food. Very kindly grab a turkey leg, hover it over your blender, and ask if you can make them a turkey/green bean casserole smoothie. They will never be back. Then tell whomever brought them to keep them the hell out of your house so you don’t have to start feeling guilty after one heaping mouthful of potatoes.

One or more family members will insist that you go out and eat at some $20 a plate buffet the day before Thanksgiving after you’ve bought about $600 worth of groceries and done hours of pre-cooking–because they are lazy. Kindly tell them you know a great place and will gladly make the reservations and meet them there. Then print and email them a doctored Google Map that will take them to a Salvation Army Soup Kitchen or the local crack house. Call about noon to make sure they got there safe, and tell them you decided to stay home after all! Then blame it all on Google Maps and tell them they might want to stop by Burger King, because your table is already full.

Whatever the current “vogue” disease, virus, or illness is this year, someone at your dinner (possibly your favorite elderly hypocondriac) will be suffering from it, or claim to be. Bird flu, herpes, whatever. They’ve all seen the commercials and TV news and it’s just a matter of time until your 80 year old Aunt Edna tells you, “I’ve been watchin’ those Valtrex commercials and I think I’ve got that herpes!” Or, before your 73-year-old Aunt Gertrude tells you she can no longer eat cranberries because it is very bad for her Restless Leg Syndrome. Tell her you read the New England Journal of Medicine and that cranberries are good for RLS.

If you live in a rural area, someone in your family–possibly a teenager–will show up at your house with a firearm demanding you take them “hunting in the woods.” Give them a plastic Wal-Mart sack, a tube of toothpaste, a spool of thread and whatever other random items you can think of and send them off in search of a red-headed, yellow-billed Snipe. Tell them all the items must be used to attract, catch, and restrain the snipe. They’ll come back covered in toothpaste and thread and swear to God they almost had one.

Almonds do not belong in Green Bean Casserole.

Asparagus does not belong at a Thanksgiving meal unless you are having a “whose pee smells the worst” competition after dinner.

If you are unfortunate enough to go to dinner at a home where you do not have control over the table settings, chances are you’ll be sitting staring at a massive centerpiece concocted from pumpkins, tree branches, fake birds, and crushed velvet. Resist the temptation to casually remove it from the table. Instead take your lighter (or borrow one from someone who smokes), and descretly set it on fire. When someone notices, announce: “Oh, my god! The centerpiece spontainously combusted!” before throwing a large pitcher of water (which you just happened to have handy) all over it. Then tell everyone how you’ve heard all about this phenomenon on the Discovery Channel, and how precisely the same thing happened to your Aunt Edna’s Christmas centerpiece two years ago. If a child happened to make that centerpiece (oops!) and is now in tears, cheer them up by saying, “but did you see how cool it was when it burned? Did you see all the pretty colors?”

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