Did your aunt heap praise on "Sarah Palin's Alaska"? Did you see a Goldline pamphlet next to your father's recliner? Did New England running back Benjarvus Green-Ellis' name and/or race inspire lamentable comments from Gramps?
Communicate your "favorite" holiday moments in the comments.
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My weekend was sadly free of such controversy. In fact, Pops told a story about a hard-working resident alien that he really admired!
was his story about me?
Most definitely not.
The most lamentable comments I heard over Thanksgiving were from one particularly loud, overweight woman standing near me at the Macy's Parade. Every time anything corporate or a brand name advertisement at all went by, she'd yell out its corporate slogan or theme song, then cackle like it was the funniest goddam thing she'd ever heard in her life. Her family was loving it, too. I would have gladly given my life in a float disaster if I knew it would take them out too.
Note for Editor: Check yoself. My blog was updated more recently than one that's still on your list in the sidebar. I'm piffed.
The only thing remotely embarrassing was the abrasive non sequitur my wildly confusing relation specification committed when he cajoled thanks for the troops into his turn to talk at the table. It was his heavy Minnesota accent that put it over the top. Unfortunately for your story time here, I held it together.
For the record: I don't mean to disrespect the troops. But it's simply a fact that I haven't been thankful for their actions — at least the ones we hear about, i.e. in Iraq and Afghanistan — since it became a common belief there never were any WMDs.
Those wars haven't "protected my freedom" personally (as he asserted the troops have) in any conceivable way. At best, they've assuaged the unavoidable shame I have as a US citizen. I suppose I would appreciate someone stiching me up very slowly after having stabbed me with a broadsword. So there's that. But I don't think that's worthy of a Thanksgiving shout out.
So can we get a moratorium on thanking the troops for my freedom until an army reaches our shores? It'd be more appropriate to thank the entire global intelligence community, I think.
… I guess this rant is kind of embarrassing. Does that count?
Not a relative, but the "thanking the troops" story does remind of something else that happened over the Thanksgiving weekend. Some friends and I were at a mostly empty bar, enjoying drinks and conversation, when a very drunk woman started screaming at us to thank her soldier friend (sitting next to her, appearing embarrassed) who was shipping out to Afghanistan in two weeks. We politely clapped our hands, hoping we'd done enough to get to stop staring at us, when my friend stupidly blurted out, "My sister fought in Iraq."
She would later claim she thought this would get the crazy, loud drunk woman to leave us alone. Of course, it had the opposite effect, and for the next hour we had a drunk woman stumbling next to our table, screaming in our faces about how "They're fucking heroes!!" "Thank your sister every day!!" and trying to get us to dance.
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