Comes from hanging out mostly with like-minded people. Then you get, “How could X have won?! Nobody I know voted for him!”
We carefully avoided almost all political talk this Thanksgiving because one of the guys has married a Tea Party extremist Christian nutball and none of us want to deal with her shit. So we steered the conversation to safer topics or just kept silent.
What I wouldn’t give to be at that table and not knowing anyone or caring how much trouble I made. That would be fun.
Oh, another crazy Turkey Day convo: every single person in the family was shocked to learn I still ride a motorcycle. Why? My brother and I had dirtbikes as kids; my brother took a spill and injured his knee, so my grandmother took them away and sold them when I was 15.
Now, I’ve had a motorcycle since I left home at 22. Two of my uncles (both now deceased) rode and we talked bikes all the time at family gatherings, but no one picked up on the fact I was talking about the present. So one of my cousins mentioned he’s looking for his first bike, and I pulled up pictures on my iPad and showed him mine and made some suggestions on what to look for. My sister sees the picture and blurts out “You’ve got a bike? But you’re not allowed!” before we all burst out laughing. It reminded me of the Friends ep where Monica and Ross say they aren’t allowed to play football.
Something similar happened the first time my brother visited me in Chicago. He saw a bottle of single malt and gasped “How did you get this?” I was 23 at the time, and he’s a year younger, so I just looked at him. “Oh. Right.”
“And here’s to Squanto and Massasoit and the Wampanoag! Our colony couldn’t have made it through the winter without you guys!”
– Uncle Ferd, just before his fatal blunderbuss accident
“We welcome our white brothers from across the Great Sea in a spirit of peace and friendship, that we know our descendants will live in together through all future generations.”
- Massasoit