By Larry Flesler

Thanksgiving Dinner was at my house this year and it was a great day for relaxing with family and close friends.

My Wife and Daughter were busy in the kitchen while Van, Stu, Wadi, Marie and I relaxed in my living room and watched Football on my new 27″ Magnavox.  My daughter gave me the TV as a birthday gift this year and I was proud to show it off.
Wadi and Marie brought finger food while Van and Stu were in charge of the booze.  Wadi made cocktail weenies while Marie brought her famous 5-alarm corn dogs.  Van and Stu brought wine, beer and six bottles of Dewar’s although one of the bottles was nearly empty when they arrived.
We enjoyed pleasant conversation while waiting for the big meal, the topics ranging from sports, politics, religion to how to properly remove a bunion.  We finished off our second bottle of Dewar’s and the finger food was vanishing rapidly - good times.
I always try to steer the conversation away from politics as Van is a raging liberal while Wadi and Stu are more conservative.  Things got a little heated when the topic of global warming came up. They were shouting a bit when I excused myself to visit the commode as Marie’s 5-alarm corn dogs affected me badly.

When I returned, Van had Wadi in a full nelson while Stu and Marie were half naked rolling around on my imitation leather barcalounger.  I left Van and Wadi alone to ‘fight it out’ like two hockey players and almost found myself engaged in a Devil’s triangle with Marie and Stu but remembered my wife and daughter were nearby.

I decided to leave my friends alone for awhile and paid a visit to my wife and daughter.
I poked my head in the kitchen, barely able to see my wife through the wall of smoke from her True Blue 100’s and asked how things were coming along. She turned and glared at me, grabbed a ceramic bowl of hot gravy and threw it in my direction while screaming “I’m doing the best I can, Fatty!”

‘I guess she’s almost there,’ I thought to myself as I returned to the living room.

Van and Wadi were done wrestling and Stu was pouring Schlitz on my barcalounger trying to free Marie’s bare backside from the imitation leather. The room was a mess - the cocktail weenies and corn dogs were everywhere and it smelled of Old Spice, Dewar’s, Schlitz and Jean Nate’.

My innards were gurgling like a chemist’s lab and I was repeating like a civil war cannon. I thought it best to excuse myself, grabbed a bottle of Dewar’s and made my way to the quiet solitude of my basement.

I sat and waited for my stomach to reach it’s boiling point and thought how thankful I was for family and good friends.