Poll 11-24-15 Gratitude and Memory

Our TG's are pretty uneventful. That's how we like them. As kids, we used to drive to my dad's mom's house for TG. We lived in OKC, they lived in Haskell, TX, so it was just over 4 hours. Generally, we would get up at the crack of dawn and drive down for the day, as my dad only got TG off. Then my grandmother would gripe about my brother and I not eating this or that. Fun times.

Now, we just hang out in pajamas and I usually go out to some stores when they open around 5 or 6. It's really more a day of rest than anything else.

I can't think of a thanksgiving I think of as best. Our thanksgiving is so traditional that they are immensely predictable and therefore very comforting. Same meal, same fellowship, coffee and dessert. Maybe a glass of wine now.

Last years thanksgiving stands out to me because it was the first time I had the finances to go to a Black Friday sale and buy a couple of things just for my own pleasure. The Keurig machine has been a blessing. The soda stream machine sits in a closet untouched.

My best Thanksgiving is probably when I was crashing at a friends place after ending up homeless. Another friend of ours had gotten into a fist fight with his dad a few days earlier, and we were all on our lonesomes for Thanksgiving. So he used a perk he got through working at a movie theater to get us free tix to go see Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. Afterwards we heated up some frozen dinners and hung out for a few hours talking. It's the only Thanksgiving where I truly felt that life was showing me what to be Thankful for, rather than giving into a cultural obligation to be grateful for what I had.