Thanksgiving is My Savior

In this day in age, being an American sometimes aint as easy as it used to be. This past August, I returned home after an eight month voyage around the world. I wasn't pulling a Marco Polo kind of trip. For every camel that he rode I smoked a Camel cigarette and for every time he asked in a different language "where's the closest village" I asked "where's the closest bar". I mean shit, the times are a changing, and traveling around the world just isnt what it used to be. But I have to say, even though I wasn't exploring unchartered territories, I was exploring a world that was pretty different than the world I grew up in, which is the U.S. and A.. Now we all know that America is on the world’s shit list because we went off and started a war in the middle of Iraq which is in the middle of the Middle East which is also the epicenter of the Muslim world (no big deal right?). So we have pissed a lot of people off and have given the world a justifiable reason to give us some heat. So, in my first couple months abroad, I wanted to lay low as an American. Instead of getting a 16oz. coffee at Starbucks, I hit up the closest Cafe and got a nice little cappucino and sipped it for an hour while having a cigarette. Instead of having fly-by dinners consisting of a hoagie, chips, and a 20 oz. Coke, I enjoyed a nice three course meal of wine, pasta, and cigarettes. Instead of wearing baggy pants, I tried wearing skin tights, but unfortunately my thighs were too thick.

It seemed like heaven, it for a while it was. But I wanted to get to get the full experience of being abroad, so I started talking with people. Now generally, in any conversation, if you notice someone else is a foreigner then you ask where he or she is from. It was obvious I was an American, so generally that excited people (sometimes in negative and positive ways) But I realized that the more I revealed my identity as an "American" the more I found myself locked into endless discussions about American foreign policy, the incompetence of George Bush, and America's obsession with itself and its obliviousness to the rest of the world. Sometimes it was interesting but sometimes I was drunk and just didn’t care. After about three months of these conversations, I realized that I wish I was just always drunk, because it became frustrating and frankly, I started to get a little insulted that so many people just ignored the fact that I maybe had the slightest bit of respect for my country, despite all that was going on. So I went through a re-Americanization phase: I bought a a red, white and blue bandana, a cowboy hat, and a bottle of Jack and streaked through the streets of Rome singing the national Anthem...pssssycccchhheee! Actually, I just thought of the thing I loved most about being an American. I thought of an American experience that all these slezzy euro-mullet, tight jean wearing, Virginia slim smoking Italian guys were deprived of. That my friends, is the holy day of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, the holiday of all holidays, the meal of all meals, followed by the bouge (cigarettes) of all bouge, and the dumps of all dumps, is possibly the greatest day in America's history. A day when family, friends, neighbors, teammates, and porch masturbators can come together in munching matrimony to appreciate the greatness of our American culinary roots. It is a day when we can put down our M-16's and pick up our forks to indulge ourselves in a meal that really represents what America is all about: munching face and watching football. It is a day when we can pretend that we didn't screw over the Indians, but instead had a happy feast that represented our warm welcome to the new world (hurray!). It is a day when college students can for once be happy about a post-blackout hangover because we don’t have to be eating food from our dining hall. Most importantly, it is a day when every type of American can lounge around the house, enjoy the company of our family, appreciate the genius of cooking, respect the beauty of the NFL, and acknowledge the importance of cable television.

So I hope you can understand my story, though long and at points indirect, it is of great importance to me. Because for all those times when I felt that being an American was a burden rather then a blessing, I always reminded myself of one day. The day that is exactly one week from tomorrow, the holiest day of the year, Thanksgiving.