it is mind your anders if you are interested, guys.
Jason called promptly at seven o'clock. I didn't even have to look at the clock to verify this, because this is the time my mom traditionally rolls everyone out of bed on Thanksgiving; her philosophy is that if she has to be awake to cook, everyone else has to be awake to keep her company. Everyone hates this tradition, but none of us exactly scamper around the night before to prepare dishes, either. Even though I decided not to go to Oregon this year, my family decided that it didn't mean that I should be left out of this particular tradition. Jason was completely awake. This year, he apparently went to bed early and woke up at six-thirty so he wouldn't again have to suffer my mom's wrath or her bucket of cold water, which all of us have received in the face at one point or another. I've experienced this once. I was seventeen and I had snuck out the night before and I thought that I would play sick the next day so that I could sleep in, but my mom had heard me climb back in the house at three in the morning, so instead of trying to wake me up the traditional way, I got ice water dumped on me, but I digress.
Anyway, Jason called me and he was too perky for my liking and instead of letting me get in a word in edgewise, he decided to regale me with stories about previous Thanksgivings until I was forced to give up the plan to go back to sleep once I had coerced him off the phone. So he goes, "Do you remember that Thanksgiving when you were in kindergarten?" Not really, but to my credit, back then, I spent most of my time eating crayons and paste and it was still seven o'clock in the morning. "I was walking you home and you were showing me the picture you painted of a turkey. You kept mentioning how you had traced your hand for the body, like I couldn't see that and how you had to glue on blue feathers because someone had already taken all the red ones." I told him I really didn't see a point in this, but he ignored me. "And that chubby kid with the runny nose that used to beat you up for your lunch money came up to us and asked why you had a black brother and an Asian sister." I remembered that year, too, because I had gone right home and asked my mom the same thing, because up until that point, it never really occurred to me that my family was any different than anyone else's.
A little later, he hands Arik the phone. Everyone wants to invoke their own personal brand of torture. Apparently, that's what holidays are all about in the Holt family. And Arik went, "Do you remember that Thanksgiving Dad got the great idea to buy a live turkey instead of a frozen one?" That was a pretty bad year. I think I was in middle school because I associate that winter with a holiday dance and Michelle Wike's mouth tasting like candy canes. For the record, I'm not ethically opposed to eating animals. I could eat a big, juicy cheeseburger every day for the rest of my life if I wouldn't seriously be risking obesity or a heart attack, but there is a line and I had to draw it at chopping the head off a turkey when there were plenty of already dead turkeys in the freezer at the grocery store. So since I'm the youngest, I guess my dad and Arik and Jason took a vote and decided that I was going to be the one that got to assassinate the turkey which they were all affectionately calling Dinner. So this is what I did and you would have done the same thing, too. The night before Thanksgiving, I liberated that turkey. I managed to run around after it in the back yard long enough to catch it and when I did, I marched straight out to the woods behind my house and let that turkey go. It didn't really go anywhere, though. It sort of loitered around the lining of our property because it didn't really know what to do with itself. And, as you can see, I'm still mocked relentlessly for it. "Jesus, you were such a whiny bitch about it." Arik was saying. "You made Dad take it to animal control, like they didn't go on and kill the thing right after he brought it in." That was not the point. The point was that I didn't end up having to kill that turkey and no matter what anyone says, I can pretend that it lived a happy, long turkey life.
By the time Maili got on the phone, I was fully awake, nursing my second espresso. Maili might be my favorite sibling because she doesn't mock me for being the baby or being a liberator of poultry. "I'm sorry they woke you up so early," she instantly apologized, even though it really wasn't her fault at all. "I figured you would rather talk to me than have Arik or Jason torture you so early in the morning." And then she went, "Do you remember last Thanksgiving?" She didn't even have to remind me. Last year sucked for both of us. We suffered twin break-ups. I don't particularly miss Lauren, but when you invest half a decade of your life with a person and you see that relationship fail, you're going to have a reaction no matter how many times you tried to convince yourself that you didn't care. Maili and I had turkey, specifically Wild Turkey. She took a red-eye to Los Angeles the night before and we spent our four day weekend drinking, eating homemade taquitos, and watching slasher movies. "It's better this year," she told me, which was really important for me to hear because even if I'm the baby, I still feel like it's my job to protect my sister.
My mom was last and she had no interest in rehashing memories with me. "David Anders Holt, why the hell are you not here with your family? This is the second year in a row that you haven't shown up for Thanksgiving." This was the point I glimpsed over to my bed, sheets all over the place because she has a tendency to move around in her sleep. So I said, "I don't know, mom. Something suddenly came up."
Anyway, Jason called me and he was too perky for my liking and instead of letting me get in a word in edgewise, he decided to regale me with stories about previous Thanksgivings until I was forced to give up the plan to go back to sleep once I had coerced him off the phone. So he goes, "Do you remember that Thanksgiving when you were in kindergarten?" Not really, but to my credit, back then, I spent most of my time eating crayons and paste and it was still seven o'clock in the morning. "I was walking you home and you were showing me the picture you painted of a turkey. You kept mentioning how you had traced your hand for the body, like I couldn't see that and how you had to glue on blue feathers because someone had already taken all the red ones." I told him I really didn't see a point in this, but he ignored me. "And that chubby kid with the runny nose that used to beat you up for your lunch money came up to us and asked why you had a black brother and an Asian sister." I remembered that year, too, because I had gone right home and asked my mom the same thing, because up until that point, it never really occurred to me that my family was any different than anyone else's.
A little later, he hands Arik the phone. Everyone wants to invoke their own personal brand of torture. Apparently, that's what holidays are all about in the Holt family. And Arik went, "Do you remember that Thanksgiving Dad got the great idea to buy a live turkey instead of a frozen one?" That was a pretty bad year. I think I was in middle school because I associate that winter with a holiday dance and Michelle Wike's mouth tasting like candy canes. For the record, I'm not ethically opposed to eating animals. I could eat a big, juicy cheeseburger every day for the rest of my life if I wouldn't seriously be risking obesity or a heart attack, but there is a line and I had to draw it at chopping the head off a turkey when there were plenty of already dead turkeys in the freezer at the grocery store. So since I'm the youngest, I guess my dad and Arik and Jason took a vote and decided that I was going to be the one that got to assassinate the turkey which they were all affectionately calling Dinner. So this is what I did and you would have done the same thing, too. The night before Thanksgiving, I liberated that turkey. I managed to run around after it in the back yard long enough to catch it and when I did, I marched straight out to the woods behind my house and let that turkey go. It didn't really go anywhere, though. It sort of loitered around the lining of our property because it didn't really know what to do with itself. And, as you can see, I'm still mocked relentlessly for it. "Jesus, you were such a whiny bitch about it." Arik was saying. "You made Dad take it to animal control, like they didn't go on and kill the thing right after he brought it in." That was not the point. The point was that I didn't end up having to kill that turkey and no matter what anyone says, I can pretend that it lived a happy, long turkey life.
By the time Maili got on the phone, I was fully awake, nursing my second espresso. Maili might be my favorite sibling because she doesn't mock me for being the baby or being a liberator of poultry. "I'm sorry they woke you up so early," she instantly apologized, even though it really wasn't her fault at all. "I figured you would rather talk to me than have Arik or Jason torture you so early in the morning." And then she went, "Do you remember last Thanksgiving?" She didn't even have to remind me. Last year sucked for both of us. We suffered twin break-ups. I don't particularly miss Lauren, but when you invest half a decade of your life with a person and you see that relationship fail, you're going to have a reaction no matter how many times you tried to convince yourself that you didn't care. Maili and I had turkey, specifically Wild Turkey. She took a red-eye to Los Angeles the night before and we spent our four day weekend drinking, eating homemade taquitos, and watching slasher movies. "It's better this year," she told me, which was really important for me to hear because even if I'm the baby, I still feel like it's my job to protect my sister.
My mom was last and she had no interest in rehashing memories with me. "David Anders Holt, why the hell are you not here with your family? This is the second year in a row that you haven't shown up for Thanksgiving." This was the point I glimpsed over to my bed, sheets all over the place because she has a tendency to move around in her sleep. So I said, "I don't know, mom. Something suddenly came up."