Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! You might want to add turkeys to that list. Turkey Day is upon us again and this holiday should come with a warning label. Yes, we have almost as much to fear as our soon to be oven-roasted friends. There are several potential pitfalls to Thanksgiving that go unnoticed every year because we are all drunk with holiday cheer. Acknowledging the dangers is the first step to avoiding them, so here we go with your quick hit Thanksgiving "threat down."
First off, many suffer from vertigo and whiplash as they rush out of Charlottesville so fast that they make their heads spin. Steve Martin knows a little bit about the trying times of holiday travel. Planes, trains and automobiles are used to race home but also are used to get bored in an airport waiting out a delay or to get really stressed driving on a congested highway. Two victims oft go overlooked during this mass exodus: professors and your GPA. Professors get really lonely and depressed as they stare out into empty lecture halls on Monday and Tuesday. (The fact that the administration should throw in the towel and not have class on those days is another matter.) While in their unappreciated rage, professors lash out by assigning papers and giving quizzes and tests on those two days. Why aren't you thankful for your professors and your grades?
Another thing to watch out for on Thanksgiving is all the people who have an ax to grind. The good people over at P.E.T.A feel it is their duty to remind us of the grave injustice of eating tasty animals. Every year they raise hell and call for stays of execution of all the turkeys in the land, offering up tofu as an equal alternative. Of course there are also the Native Americans who have a legitimate gripe against being stereotyped as Squanto and for all that land they lost. All this is going on while the people who should really be making Thanksgiving dangerous for everyone else stay silent. Who are they, you ask? Well, you (or at least two-thirds of you) must only look in your mirror to find out. We Virginians should have a serious gripe about Thanksgiving. The very first Thanksgiving was actually in Virginia. In 1619 at Berkeley Plantation, the first Thanksgiving meal was held in this state two years before the Plymouth settlers. Yet every year, we let those pesky Puritans steal our thunder. Why aren't we more outraged? Why are we so mellow on Thanksgiving?
True to our Wahoo ways, gluttony is perhaps the deadliest aspect of Thanksgiving, as many try to eat twice their weight. Deprived of a home-cooked meal for weeks or even months, we don't take the presentation of good food lightly. We do our own gobbling of sorts as we chow down on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie. Yet each comes with its own danger as so many forces conspire against every eater, bringing them to their beds and couches. Urban legends abound of the drowsing effects of tryptophan, which has felled even the fittest feaster, drooping the eyes and sending him to an early nap. Stuffing and mashed potatoes quickly cause carbohydrate poisoning, which prompts lethargy in even the smallest doses. The abundance and variety of pies can cause even the sweetest tooth to go into diabetic shock.
Lastly, there are the people who just take Thanksgiving too far. They are those who are too thankful. They get too caught up in food drives, decorations (silly cornucopias, what is your purpose?), parade and football watching, Thanksgiving pageants, family feuds, cooking and napping to take a moment for self-reflection and thanks. Of course there are also the people who go too far the other way and are almost self-righteous. They really border on the cynical as they go around telling everyone that we who have so much shouldn't celebrate our thanks by indulging in excess, and how Thanksgiving has really just become another commercial holiday that has gotten away from its roots. On that second claim they are actually a day early, as Black Friday is the rightful owner of that indictment.
So this Thanksgiving watch out for crazed travelers, depressed professors, vengeful vegans, history savvy Virginians, the ever-lurking deadly sin and Thanksgiving addicts. I haven't even mentioned the idiots who try and deep-fry their turkeys and end up setting their neighborhoods on fire. I can hear whispers of a red-cloaked, bearded bandit who is just around the corner.
Have a safe journey home. Happy Thanksgiving.
John's column runs biweekly Fridays. He can be reached at jgregory@cavalierdaily.com.
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