My family is somewhat terrible at celebrating holidays.
Not fully terrible. Just somewhat. For the most part, we just treat them like ordinary days.
Except we still eat birthday cake. And on Thanksgiving, we eat turkey. It's almost as if a guy who liked turkey for some reason thought it was a good idea for everyone to eat it once a year in some sort of nationally synchronized meal plan.
Not that we actually fully followed the meal plan. We didn't have any stuffing. Which is okay, because I don't like stuffing. My brother likes stuffing, however, and complained. My dad said that stuffing was too much work.
He then proceeded to make his usual speech about giving thanks that everyone proceeded to half-way ignore, instead sitting around taking shots at each other for the rest of the meal. After it was over, it was just like any other meal - we all took off back to our separate lairs. Me, back to trying to figure out what in the world I was going to write my literature essay on. Mom, to cleaning the dishes, Dad, to digging out fence posts, and my brother back to whatever it is that he does. Probably homework for university.
I did figure out what I'm going to do for my essay - I think I'm going to attack Emerson for being wrong and misinterpreting John Locke. Or something. I don't like Emerson. He puts me to sleep. In fact all of my American Lit for this semester has been improving the amount of sleep I'm getting this semester, with some minor exceptions.
That is, until my dad called us back in to watch American Sniper, which my dad had put on hold at the library and waited forever, because he is a cheapskate like me. To further reinforce this idea, we watched the movie on a 20-year old television with rabbit ears proudly perched on the top of it. The widescreen effect of the DVD was so bad that we basically watched it with a third of said TV's actual screen.
Not that I really cared that much, because that movie was awful. They never did voice over to explain anything, leaving you to guess at what was happening. I always hate it when movies do that. I'm not a fan of movies with gratuitous violence or swearing either, and this one had plenty (although realistic). Plus it was just sad, because (spoiler alert) the main protagonist dies.
And my dad got the movie, because apparently there was a shot that revealed the visual scanning powers of drones. Yawn. Also because he's a former Air Force pilot, and internalized that military culture.
Don't get me wrong - I fully appreciate the sacrifices men and women of the armed forces make to protect our country. And the movie did help me appreciate that more. But it could have been better IMO.
Oddly, being thankful for those people is appropriate for thanksgiving. So there you go.
Unless you're in Canada. In which case, don't mind me.
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