text: I remember the day of Thanksgiving would start early in the morning, with Thanksgiving breakfast. Dad would make pancakes shaped like turkeys, and then he would take them into the bathroom and eat them all while making turkey noises while my mom would sit in the kitchen and cry. After that, we'd turn the game on and Dad would begin drinking. First one, then two, then three gallons of chocolate milk. He'd yell at the TV and call every player "Roger". Like "Throw the ball to Roger!" or "C'mon, Roger, throw the ball!" It wasn't until much later that I realized he was watching soccer and they rarely throw the ball. Mom would get to work in the kitchen making the bird. Dad was vegetarian, so the bird was usually a bunch of vegetables that mom put in a blender and then shaped into a turkey. But most of the time there was plenty of meat in it as well, because my mother hated my father and she found this to be funny. So funny she'd laugh the entire time she was making the "bird" and sometimes so hard she would vomit into the sink. She was crazy. And not the laughable kind of crazy. She was really nuts. But so was dad. I guess we all were. I guess it's a crazy holiday. But it wasn't all crazy, a lot of it was fun. Like when we'd exchange Thanksgiving gifts. Typically a Thanksgiving gift was whatever you could find that was moist: wet towels, soap, grass...I remember one year I received a shoe. It was a Thanksgiving miracle and I remember putting the shoe on and running out into the street screaming "It's a Thanksgiving miracle!" but then I got hit by like three cars. The first one sent me into the other lane, then the second one sent me into the original lane and then this guy backed out of his driveway and hit me again. I lost the shoe, but I will never forget the look on everyone's face when my leg was amputated. It was like "WHOA!" After the game, dad would go into the den and put up the tree. The tree was made of turkeys, ironically, and it really started to smell by the first day of December. But dad would always say "It's tradition!" And then vomit. The turkeys were basically just impaled on a post and we hung no ornaments on them. In fact, whenever I see a turkey a feeling of mirth and awe flows through me all the way to the stump I still have from getting hit by all those cars. Once the tree was put up, we'd hang underwear from the chimney in the hopes that St. Nick would come and try the underwear on and leave little notes about our weight. Like one year I'd get "You're too skinny to play football" or another "You get your degree at John Porkins?" We were gratified by Santa's comments and we would strive to lose or gain the weight he prescribed. Until we found out that there was no Santa and it was actually aliens that were doing it. But then we hunted them down and killed them. But they turned out to just be our neighbors and that's why Mom went to jail. After preparing for Christmas, we'd watch another soccer game and then play Monopoly together. We'd open up the board and then put all the pieces out and then dad would wave his arm over the board and say "Foreclosure!" and then throw the game at one of us. Whoever was hit with Monopoly had to go make him cocktails. It was a helluva game. One time I made his cocktail too stiff and he told me that I couldn't go to bed until I ate the couch. I gave it a try and three days later he finally let me go to bed, but you could tell he was disappointed. "Now, son, that was a couch. And you only ate half. Do you realize there are children in Africa with no couches to eat?" I felt awful for awhile, but then it went away. But then Dad got mad that I wasn't still feeling bad and he sent me to Africa to look for couches and I found a bunch, but by then he had died or moved. I forget. But I wasn't 34 until I returned, so I'm sure he had a rich life. At dinner, Mom would put out the turkey and she would sing theme songs from TV shows that would always end up just being the Cheers theme song because she would forget the melody and words of whatever she was singing. Dad would pat us all on the heads and ask "Gobble, gobble?" Like his voice would go high at the end, like it wasn't just a turkey noise it was him trying to communicate. Each year we'd try to answer and only once did someone say the right thing and it was my sister. "Gobble, gobble?" "Yes?" I would ask. And he'd frown and move to the next kid. "Gobble, gobble?" And that one year my sister said "Morley Safer" and my dad nodded. It was the only time that worked. We kept trying "Morley Safer" after that, but it wasn't the answer anymore and we all just kinda looked foolish. Then we'd eat. Dad would always remark "I'm glad there's no meat in this." like he knew there was meat in it and was warning my mom, but she would just laugh nervously and pinch me really hard under the table. After dinner, my mom would take us all out to a national forest and leave us there. We still don't know what my parents would do at night, because it took hours to walk back home. I guess some people would call my family "crazy", but they were my family and I loved them all.