A late post, I know. Science Olympiad (my nerd convention) was this weekend, and I spent the rest of the time moving back into my room (I've been stuck in the attic for about three weeks). I wrote this the day after Thanksgiving in a fit of boredom. I wish my Thanksgivings were really like this; all we actually do is eat and then fall asleep from the tryptophan.
Thanksgiving at the Anderson’s
house is always interesting.
Actually, I don’t think ‘interesting’ quite covers it.
I went along with my friend, Tilly Anderson, to her
family’s Thanksgiving feast. Not a meal—a feast. I was going to school in her
hometown, and I wasn’t able to go back home for Thanksgiving, so Tilly invited
me over to help with the cooking and join her family for the feast and
competitions. I asked her what she meant by competitions, and if that meant
they were going to be watching the football game. She said, no, they weren’t
watching it, and that I would have to wait and see.
I arrive ten minutes early, but when I got in, I
discovered I was actually late. Tilly’s entire family was already there,
bustling around like bees inside the huge, linoleum-floored kitchen with its
soaring ballroom ceiling. The architecture was grand enough to leave me staring
for a full five minutes, considering the fact that the Andersons’ house was a
tiny, scruffy bungalow perched on the corner of Livingston and 5th. I would
have stared longer, but Tilly noticed me about then, and she swooped down and
seized me by the arm, grinning and talking excitedly about what they were
cooking. I didn’t hear a whole lot, as my brain was still frozen on the
impossible size of the inside of her house, but I did catch the fact that she
and I were supposed to be dressing the turkey. I used that little bit of
normalcy as an anchor to reality, and was able to focus on that as we shoved
our way through the crowds of Tilly’s relatives. We bumped into people wearing
togas, Medieval half-armor, and several who appeared to be partially or
completely covered in scales or fur. I didn’t have any time to assimilate all
this, so I didn’t end up freezing again and was able to get to the turkey with
relatively little mishap.
We finally reached the table where the turkey was begin
dressed, and I had to do another double-take as I realized it was about the
size of a half-grown cow. Tilly handed me a baster and a pot of honey mixed
with spices I’d never smelled before, and told me to start glazing the bird. I
did so in a sort of half-dream, noting as I did so that there was the
occasional bluish, metallic-colored scale stuck to the pan underneath the
turkey. Tilly picked up a bowl of stuffing she’d been mixing before I came and
went to work on that, chatting happily with me and with anyone who happened to
poke by and see how the main course was coming. A young boy with skin the color
of an eggplant stopped by and tried to filch a bit of stuffing out of the bowl,
but Tilly gave him a smack with her wooden spoon and he took off running,
shooting dirty looks behind him. She simply snorted and went back to her work,
commenting on how difficult Mr. Weisner’s chemistry tests had been this past
semester.
When the turkey was done, Tilly grabbed a couple passing
men (she called them ‘uncles’) who looked to be half-dragon and asked them to
help her with the bird. Between the four of us, we managed to heave the
hundred-pound platter of meat off the counter, across the crowded kitchen, and
into the waiting mouth of a huge, black, iron oven. The heat kicking out of it
was enough to sunburn my face, and Tilly and I had to tuck our heads under our
arms and let the dragon uncles (who were immune to the heat) guide the platter
in. Tilly closed it with a loud clang and wiped the sweat off her face,
grinning and thanking her dragon uncles in a deep, guttural language that I
couldn’t understand. They replied in kind, smiling, and then turned to me with
jagged, pearly white grins.
“Merry Christmas!” one told me in slightly slurred
English, and the other raised one hand in the Vulcan salute. They then both
walked away with their heads held high, their tails swinging behind them with
every step. Tilly told me that they’d been working on their human languages
lately, and that they were very proud of their progress.
The turkey was ready two hours later. By then, just about
everything else had been cooked and laid out in the dining room (which,
unsurprisingly, was even bigger than the kitchen and was decorated with
malachite columns that stretched between the tiled floor and an arched ceiling
painted in the likeness of the Andromeda galaxy). The dragon uncles and a pair
of women with red skin, pronged tails, and delicate, curling horns jutting from
their shaggy black hair worked together to pull the turkey back out of the
oven, not a one of them using a hot pad. The rest of the family formed a huge
procession behind the main course, cheering and stomping their feet as they
paraded into the dining room. The turkey was set down in the middle of the
table on a gigantic Kevlar hot pad to keep it from burning the table, and
everyone swarmed the tables and took their places. I sat next to Tilly
somewhere in the middle, across from one of the dragon uncles and next to a
very attractive young man dressed in a black robe with a cowl drawn over his
head. At least, I tried to sit. The instant my rear touched the seat, the
mahogany chair gave a rattling shiver, and with a querulous creak, it darted
backwards underneath me and bucked me over the backrest, sending me sprawling
on my face on the floor. The little purple-skinned boy I’d seen before
scampered out from underneath the table, laughing, and took off running with
the chair loping alongside him down the length of the hall and out the door. A
woman with purple skin just like him shouted and lurched out of her chair,
yelling after him in another foreign language as she ran after him. Tilly found
me another chair, apologetically explaining that I’d just been subjected to one
of her cousin Id’s practical jokes. Apparently, he and his pet chair Somi
pulled that one every year, though everyone had started getting wise to the
joke. I was a newbie, and so he knew he could get away with it.
Without further mishap, we settled down for the meal. We
said grace (which took forever, because there were so many different cultures
assembled and each one had a different religion), and then everyone eagerly
lunged for the food with forks, knives, and bare hands. I managed to snag a
couple cranberries right off the bat, and Tilly snuck me some corn off her Aunt
Sylvia’s plate to her left. There was no order to the whole ordeal. You grabbed
whatever passed your way and hoped you liked it, and you guarded whatever you
did snatch carefully for fear of your neighbors stealing it. I didn’t guard
myself carefully enough at first, and for a while all I was able to eat was
what I could stuff in my mouth with each passing of the platters. I got some of
the turkey, which tasted like turkey, and some mashed potatoes (but no gravy)
that didn’t taste like mashed potatoes, and I managed to hang onto a mug of
some sort of hot liquid that tasted the way pine trees smell. Eating was
exhausting work, but in the end, I managed to utterly stuff myself, and judging
by the sated looks of the rest of the table, they did too. There were a lot of
leftovers in the end, which a troop of avian women in white robes set about
packing up, stuffing everything in Tupperware containers for people to take
home with them at the end of the day.
The rest of us remained at the tables, talking. Tilly was
talking with her dragon uncle, and so I ended up in conversation with the
cowled man sitting next to me. I found out that he was from a world someone in
the region of Alpha Centauri, and that he’d been going to college as an artist
for the past three years. I was majoring in art as well, so we hit off well,
and I must admit, I found him attractive. He had the dark hair I tend to like
in guys, and dark purple eyes that looked green in certain light. We were
interrupted from time to time by Tilly’s dragon uncle, who was still trying out
his English at every opportunity. Whenever he recognized something we said, he
would tap me on the shoulder, nod emphatically, and say, “Platypus”, to which I
would reply, “Very good” and nod back encouragingly. I passed a very pleasant
hour or so this way, and was almost disappointed when it came time for the
competitions to begin. Almost.
Tilly’s father (who worked at the college and whom I had
met on several occasions) stood up at his place at the head of the table and
tapped on his glass with his fork for attention. He announced that the
competitions were about to begin, and that we should all move to the
auditorium. The cowled man I’d been talking to (his name was Rennac, I’d found)
grinned and told me he was participating in the Sukil event this year, to which
I replied that I had no idea what any of it meant. He just grinned again and
told me to wait and see.
The whole family got up as one with a collective noise of
scraping chairs and clattering plates, and we all moved as one into the next
room over—the auditorium. The place was built like a Roman theater, with a
round, flat stage down at the bottom and layered benches surrounding it in a
circle. Most of the place was filled even before I could make it in, and so
Rennac, Tilly and I had to find a spot near the top back. I wasn’t
disappointed, because I had a fantastic view of the entire auditorium and could
people-watch at my leisure. Once everyone was settled, the games began.
First up was a group of Asian-looking people, who were
dressed in tight, glossy black jumpsuits that looked to be patterned with
scales. They competed against the avian women who had been cleaning up earlier,
performing a series of acrobatic maneuvers. They went back and forth, each
group one-upping the other until one of the avians fell (she took off flying,
so she wasn’t hurt), and the Asians claimed victory. Next was a wrestling
match, in which both dragon uncles, a skinny, mouse-haired young boy, and three
men who looked like Vikings took part in, wrestling one another in turn and
eliminating down to two. In the end, it was one of the Viking men versus the
mouse-haired boy, and the boy won with a move somewhere between a pile driver
and a half nelson. The Viking shook hands with him and walked away, looking
disappointed but not overly surprised. Tilly whispered to me that the boy (her
second-cousin Eli), had been the champion for four years straight, and it was
everyone’s dream to beat him someday.
The Sukil was next, which I found was a form of martials
arts that apparently originated from Rennac’s home world. He fought one of the
avians, cousin Id, two professors that I recognized from the college, and
Tilly’s dad, and beat everyone until he came up against Mr. Anderson. Tilly’s
dad was a tall man of about forty, with black hair shot through with gray and a
pretty good physique, and he beat Rennac like it was the easiest thing in the
world. The two of them were set in the middle of the stage facing one another,
each armed with a long, flat bat like a cricket bat that was covered with blue
paint. They began circling one another, knees slightly bent, and the paddles
held out to one side and dripping little lines of blue across the stage floor.
Rennac moved first, which was his mistake, and received the first splotch of
paint across his back for his trouble. Tilly’s dad moved out of the way when
Rennac tried to return, and received only a faint splatter of blue across the
front of his shirt. They went back and forth like that—dodging, lunging, and
trying to smack one another with the blue paint. Towards the end, Rennac had
only one small patch of non-blue on him (under his armpit) that he was
frantically trying to guard. Mr. Anderson hadn’t gotten more than the droplets
on the front of his shirt. In a desperate attempt to turn the tides, Rennac
tried to feint and then dodge behind Tilly’s dad and get him in the back. Mr.
Anderson, however, anticipated the move, and he spun with the smaller boy and
scythed his paddle up so that it slipped underneath Rennac’s tightly-clenched
arm and scored the final splotch of paint under his armpit. The match was
called, and Rennac slunk off the stage like a beaten dog, hiding his
blueberry-colored face. I didn’t see him again after that. Tilly told me later
that he left immediately after the Sukil.
The rest of the competitions were much like that. There
was storytelling, music, more fighting, and even a spitting competition that a
froglike man with oversized eyes won. Cousin Id and Somi won a problem-solving
event together (they had to reach and disarm what looked like a bomb strapped
to the ceiling in under five minutes), and one of the dragon uncles won one of
the feats of strength. The grand finale involved everyone; we all had to gather
around the upper ring of the bleachers, and try to throw a ping-pong ball all
the way into a little iron bucket in the middle of the stage. I didn’t get it,
but I got pretty close (my ball hit the rim and then bounced off). Tilly and
twelve others made it in, and they each got to choose a song for the avian
women and Tilly’s mom to play on their assortment of instruments. Tilly chose Carry
on my Wayward Son, someone else picked Stardust, and the rest were
either earth songs I didn’t know or were from a different planet. I sang along
what I knew, faked the refrains of others, and stomped in time to the beat
along with the rest of the family. When the last song played, everyone
concluded by pelting one another with the extra ping-pong balls we’d been
given.
After the songs, people began trickling out of the house,
returning to their respective homes, galaxies, etc. I stayed for a while,
talking with Tilly and one of the dragon uncles (his name was U’Gamar), and
exchanging stories about campus life. When I finally left, I had a Tupperware
container of leftovers (stuffing, turkey, and something blue and gelatinous I
was told was from a planet somewhere in the Rigel star system), which Tilly’s
mother told me would keep for a month so long as I kept it refrigerated. I
received several different forms of goodbye from various people on my way out
(the dragon uncles apparently thought it customary that parting friends should
stomp on one another’s feet. In a friendly way, of course), and was told to
come back next year for the next Thanksgiving feast.
Despite Tilly’s invitation to come back for Thanksgiving,
I never took her up on it. My family likes having me home for Thanksgiving, and
though they aren’t quite as interesting as the Andersons’, they are my family,
after all. New Years, however, is quite another matter, and I must admit, the Anderson
New Year party tops their Thanksgiving.
Believe it or not.
THE END
Happy belated Thanksgiving, and happy reading!
S.R. Koch
