A no-turkey Thanksgiving
Every son dreads coming home from college to discover that his father has been reading some “alternative” literature and is now full of bizarre ideas about how to live. There must be something about the college years of one’s progeny that inspires this yearning for new and different forms of knowledge, but regardless of its root cause, we know it happens. For two naïve years, I thought it couldn’t happen to me. But a week ago, I came home for Thanksgiving and my dad surprised me with “the talk.”
“Michael,” he said. “I have this book about nutrition I want you to read.”
“No thanks,” I said, and I continued to play on my Wii Fit.
“Michael, I really quite insist.” And he threw a cinder block through the television screen in a fashion that made me think I should take his request seriously.
“Well, alright. What is it?”
“I’m so glad you asked.”
“Well I didn’t really–”
“Michael, please be quiet. Read this book and then we will discuss it.”
So, despite my initial reluctance, I read the book. It was called The China Study, and as you can guess from the title, it was about how everything we eat is killing us. Specifically, foods that are not fruits, vegetables and whole grains. But no one eats those things anyway, so the generalization “everything we eat is killing us” is fundamentally sound.
Now, usually my dad’s quirky ideas (ideas like: “please keep your elbows off the table” and “try not to park the car through the dining room wall”) are harmless, but this one really affected me. Not because I believed what was written in the book; no, the author just blurted out a bunch of nonsense theories and made-up terms like “within a 99 percent confidence interval” and “increased likelihood of atherosclerosis.”
But I, like many of you, am not what you would call an “active participant” in the cooking process. In fact, I usually appear ninja-like at the table seconds after the food is laid out, scarf it down, and then flee in a cloud of smoke. Perhaps you see where I am going with this. Thanksgiving was last week, and turkey is not a fruit, a vegetable or a whole grain. Don’t believe me? I own an encyclopedia. Case closed.
Last Thursday, I participated in a one-of-a-kind event: a turkey-less Thanksgiving. I don’t know if that has ever happened before (I sure hope not), but it is not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy. My father’s cohort in culinary co-option was my sister, who is also a vegetarian and thus, under any just legal system, ineligible to participate in the feast of Thanksgiving. But the meal took place in New Hampshire, which has no legal system whatsoever, just or otherwise. The meal contained no meats at all, only sad little dishes with mushrooms and something called tempeh, which is a soft, mushy substance that tries to be meat in much the same way that Kim Kardashian tries to be interesting.
My point is: change is hard and I like to complain about it. Thank you for your time.
