6:13 PM, Wednesday November 23, 2005
	Thanksgiving in Miami.
	I'm sitting in a vintage Arne Jacobsen (bent plywood 1960's era) chair at my grandmothers house in Miami and I'm listening to I Stand Alone by Godsmack on my iPod Shuffle and even though I really can't hear anyone I smile often and on one of the occasions that I am smiling often the front door opens.       "Happy Thanksgiving everybody," says the smiling elderly woman who just opened the door.  She's a longtime neighbor of my grandmother.  I recognize her.  She's Mrs. Howard.  I don't know her first name.  I've always called her Mrs. Howard.  Mrs. Howard divorced her husband (of 47 years) right around this time last year.  As told to me by my mother:   "Elmer (Mrs. Howard's ex-husband) put his hand into his pants to scratch his private area and when he took his hand out it was covered in bugs." My grandmother said this: "His hand was like an anteater right after the anteater pulls his sticky tongue out of an ant hole." Pthirus pubis.  Somewhere out in the world Elmer had contracted a case of crabs. "Happy Thanksgiving, Norm," says my sister Sandy from behind the closed and locked bathroom door. Maybe Elmer was never right for Mrs. Howard.  Two or three Thanksgivings ago I sat across from him and listened while he told everyone eating turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie how he had once exchanged Mrs. Howard's Diaphragm (a thin rubber dome one inserts into the vagina that prevents pregnancy) with a piece of bologna. "We were young and we were going to make love and she opened up the diaphragm case and took out the slice of bologna and she tried to insert the bologna into her vagina," he said. "I knew it was bologna," said Mrs. Howard, adding, "You handyman bastard." Mr. Howard was a handyman (now retired)but on occasion and if the price is right he'll change out a water heater. My sister Sandy comes to all our family gatherings but I've never actually seen her.  She usually shows up with a new friend and after a few quick happy whatevers (Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Halloween, etc) she and her new friend head for the bathroom. "What's Sandy doing in the bathroom?" I say to my mother.  She is removing a pie from the Westinghouse Roaster Oven Model HR-25. "She and her friend are washing up for dinner," says my mother. After a pause I say: "Washing up?  They ain't washing up.  They're doing it.  Sandy and her new big dicked friend are sitting on the sink and they're doing it." "Don't start boy," says my grandmother. To my grandmother I say: "Grandma, just a couple of feet from your sweet potato casserole two people are humping.  Their tongues are out and they're sweating and their shaky fingers are going into damp orifices and they're saying things to one another like you're the only one for me baby or I love your cock sweetie.  That ain't sanitary this close to our holiday meal.  What about the bird flu?" "Help me make the whip cream, boy," she says. My grandmother rolls her own cigarettes and whenever I see her I bring her two or three packages of Black Death Rolling papers and a tin of McClintock full flavor tobacco ( it smells like apples).  Sometimes pieces of the rolling paper stick to her fat old lips and this is one of those times so I say: "Grandma you've got a rolling paper stuck to your greasy upper lip." "Concentrate on the whip cream," she says. "Norman," says my mother then eyeballing me.  She is cutting apples and putting honey and cinnamon on them. "Look for yourself," I say then pointing to my grandmothers face. "Don't you ever point at me, boy," says my grandmother. "Happy Holiday everyone," says Mrs. Howard then dropping the phonograph needle onto the Bing Crosby vinyl Christmas album. "Happy Thanksgiving," says my sisters big dicked friend from inside the bathroom and when he says Thankgiving he makes a kind of grunting noise between the Thanks and the giving. Norm's Note:  Happy Thanksgiving Regular Reader. PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT