On the Week Before
Kids: By Thanksgiving, it has already been over three weeks since Halloween! And how is a kid to survive without a monthly dose of commercialized holiday cheer generously injected into the American education system?? Impossible, I know. So instead of expecting kids to actually try to learn anything the week before a holiday, teachers fill the days with worthwhile arts and crafts like tracing your hand on a piece of construction paper, cutting it out, and gluing feathers to it.
College students: While college students have an exam in every class and a fifteen-page paper due the day before they leave, kids get to make paper hats and watch historically inaccurate plays about Thanksgiving (see below). While college students have to struggle through airport security and then undergo vomit-inducing turbulence (true story, circa this Tuesday), kids get to jump in piles of leaves. The only true joy of the week before Thanksgiving (besides the omnipresence of pumpkin-flavored things) is spring semester course registration. I couldn’t ask for more than to spend my Thanksgiving break watching all my classes’ waitlists not get any smaller!
On Historical Importance
Kids: In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue! What an awesome, heroic guy! Then one or two or a few hundred years later, the pilgrims came over wearing fun black hats with yellow buckles! They became best friends with the Native Americans! The Native Americans gave them food, and they gave the Native Americans enlightenment and blankets! They held hands, sang with all the colors of the wind, and passed around mashed potatoes!
College students: Cynicism! Columbus was a vindictive asshole! Oh, thanks Native Americans for letting us take all this boundless land out from under you! Sure made for a great harvest, and it’s definitely going to be great for some quality interstate highways one day! How could we possibly repay you? Here, let us give you some blankets full of small pox! Seems like a fair trade! Enjoy the next four centuries of discrimination and marginalization in society!
On Food
Kids: OMG TURKEY! It’s so big and shiny! Please allow me to eat until I puke.
College students: All I care about anymore are pumpkin flavored things. And it’s not just because I now go to a liberal arts school and have concerned myself with worldly issues and such and am now a vegetarian which is a huge buzz kill to the whole turkey fixation”¦ Moreover, it is because the U.S. government halts the production of pumpkin flavored things after the month of December, and I feel obligated to consume as much pumpkin as humanly possible, leaving no room for turkey-related consumption… Just this once, please allow me to eat until I puke. And then please allow me to diet until March.
On Family
Kids: LOL, I just thumb wrestled with Uncle Dan! It sure was fun. I can’t believe I get to sit next to him at the dinner table! Maybe he’ll tell me a funny story! I’m the luckiest! I hope Thanksgiving never ends!
College students: How does Uncle Dan still have anything to say about that e. coli scare three years ago? How is that logistically possible? Why is he breathing so heavily? Why do his nostrils flare every time my dad says Obama’s name? Is he sending me telepathic death signals? How do I inch my chair away without anyone noticing? Why is my sister not texting me back from across the table? Why is he picking up his food and eating it with his knife? I just saw dandruff fall off of his head and onto his plate. Ew… I think I would like to go get drunk now please.
On the Week After
Kids: ONLY SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY-TWO HOURS, FIFTY-SIX MINUTES, AND THIRTY-THREE SECONDS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! Let’s go watch the 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family!!!!
College students: Bye!!! It was nice being home for five stress-filled days of excruciatingly long conversations with obscure relatives. I can’t believe I failed in my goal of spending more time with my dogs than with real human beings. Ugh… Back to school for three stress-filled weeks of final exams, papers, and apocalyptic St. Louis weather in which Chancellor Wrighton will personally blast a giant hole in the ozone layer to give us at least two 80-degree days directly before and after a below-freezing blizzard… Let’s go watch the 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family!!!
