Nitpicking and grinning
I don’t hate very many things, but Thanksgiving is one of those things.
As a reporter, it’s always nice to pull the ‘Oh no, I have to work that day,’ card everytime the issue of celebrating the holiday comes up.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but I absolutely hate Thanksgiving. It’s always been that way. To me, Thanksgiving is a bunch of stress over meal filled with terrible tasting food.
I’ve had stuffing from five-star restaurants and I still don’t get what people see in it. Even the smell of a freshly baked turkey makes me nauseous. Cranberry sauce is the equivalent of everything that’s wrong with America. This tart gelatinous mass sitting on the table. The one time I took handmade cranberry sauce to a Thanksgiving gathering, everyone avoided it because they did not know what it was. They were so used to identifying it by the ridges left by the tin can that they could not spot the real McCoy.
Even efforts to liven up the meal can quickly turn sour. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a friend or family member nearly set the house on fire by attempting to fry a turkey.
If this is getting tedious, just walk away. I’m not even halfway through my rant about how much I detest Thanksgiving. Even the events surrounding the holiday, the parades, football games and the pop culture are terrible.
You know what doesn’t sound like a fun Thursday afternoon? Watching the Detroit Lions play football. You know what doesn’t sound fun to watch on a Thursday morning, watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even movies that take place on or around Thanksgiving are terrible. Yeah, “Plains, Trains and Automobiles” is funny, but like the holiday, it’s horribly depressing.
Even most of the folklore surrounding the event is false and the truth is far more horrifying.
There is one redeeming quality about Thanksgiving, and that is looking back and taking note of the good things in life, what you are thankful for? When I first arrived in Olney, a common joke was people asking me ‘What did I do to get here?’ As in, how did I screw up my career so bad I ended up in Olney?
The first couple of times I heard the question, I laughed it off. I was not banished from the dailies, I wanted to come here. I wanted to take a manager role and see if my philosophies regarding news coverage actually worked. So far they have, but I don’t know if some of the things I implemented would have worked in other communities. I guess that is what I am thankful for, living in a great community.
Whether it’s helping a citizen pay medical expenses through a fundraiser or helping a citizen recover after a fire, Olney citizens seem to step up for their neighbors. I’ve lived in numerous states in cities big and small and what I have seen in brief time in Olney is far from the norm.
Maybe it’s because one of my last stops before I came here was Warrenton, Mo., a dump of a town in the St. Louis suburbs. The water smelled like bleach, the people were far from friendly and every horrific stereotype I learned growing up outside of Kansas City, St. Louis’ arch rival, was reaffirmed on a daily basis.
What am I Thankful for the most this year? Just being here with people I enjoy being around. While all of you sit with your families eating your nasty meals, I’ll be at home eating Chinese and playing Fallout 4 on PS4 , but I would rather be here than anywhere else.