You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s Crazy™
Thanksgiving.
It’s wonderful and rejuvenating but at the same time it can be CRAZY!
Thanksgiving can be a Hallmark card complete with all the fixings.
Thanksgiving can also be the mad hatters tea cup ride spinning into a reverse peristalsis tornado.
I’ve seen a few Thanksgivings in my day and they often start out with the best intentions.
Family members arrive wearing their best clothes, using their best manners.
Please and thank you are plentiful like jock itch in a women’s prison.
Men get out of their seats to offer a woman a spot on the couch.
Women smile politely and excuse Uncle Ralph the family’s suspected child molester.
It is a Norman Rockwell painting set to hypnotic mood music.
But as the days go by, a relaxed, insouciant attitude can begin to take hold.
Hugs are replaced by friendly smiles and waves.
The dishes piled in the sink yesterday, become a point of irritation today.
48 hours into the holiday experiment; and the good ship Lollipop is meandering toward doom, destined to crash into the family iceberg of insanity.
Suddenly, stories are revealed that should never be told.
Alcohol is consumed by people who should never drink.
Emotions erupt, anger explodes, tears pour down the cheeks of pouting, depressed little whiners.
“Go Home”
“I hate you”
“I didn’t mean to sleep with your wife.”
The insults, the gross realization that families are crazy manifests itself like so much black cat dander on the white couch.
The drama is thick and appears at the most inappropriate of times.
The thanksgiving experiment can be easily explained. Too many people crammed into too small a space, sucking oxygen out of rooms designed for less humanity.
It’s a social experiment where lab mice are piled into a tube and then observed for signs of social breakdown.
Look Uncle Fester is twitching.
Me Maw has a rash on her chest.
Little Pugsly is pulling the cat’s tail.
The Thanksgiving Social Experiment is a flesh filled time bomb. Instead of mice and mazes, you have frantic people in airports and planes.
It’s planes and trains and automobiles and bad weather.
Sweat drips and tension escalates with so much as a wrong look.
Can a little underarm perspiration be such a catalyst for trouble?
At a TSA checkpoint, the answer is yes.
Add a snow flake in Denver or a wind gust in Charlotte, a sweaty guy who mentions the word Ebola.
Bam.
Delays, headaches, panic attacks.
Not exactly the way the Pilgrims planned it.
Would the owner of the dead baby please report to the back of the bus.
I’m just saying, pressure equates to crazy moments.
Hey, Uncle Harold, put your pants back on. Nobody wants to see that?
Driving becomes NASCAR. Fighting for 10 foot spaces of rolling pavement.
Taxis suddenly have to dodge protesters lying in the street.
Tension mounts in flying sardine cans all over the radar screen.
One adam 12. See a man about a dog.
Huh? Exactly.
The social experiment is on. Grandma’s house becomes a steal cage match in the WWF.
Airports are human blenders whipping anxiety into sweaty cheese wiz.
It’s no wonder that the holidays are a time when suicides rise, middle fingers rise, tension rise.
But if you can navigate the maze, sidestep the blender of inanity, the holidays can be a wonderful time for renewed spirit and joy.
It all depends on how you handle the great social experiment known as life.
Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks. It is a time to remember those we have lost and cherish the time we have left with those we love.
Thanksgiving is wonderful. Thanksgiving is American. Thanksgiving is crazy.
Hug a pilgrim.
Life’s Crazy™