Zach Vineyard

Two words that I wish never to hear together again: Thanksgiving and buffet.

For the first time since my travels abroad, I have found myself unable to attend Thanksgiving with my family. I was not there this year to lie to my nieces about how this particular turkey actually volunteered to be apart of our Thanksgiving meal, or to feel how nice it is to be surrounded by people that remember emphatically how terrible you looked during your awkward stage that lasted all through middle and past high school.

(Why did no one tell me I had bangs?)

But more than that, it’s the ability to eat a huge meal well beyond the tolerances of comfortableness and then crash on the nearest soft spot for a long nap, where you can finally let all your guards down and really rest; because, you’re finally in a place where you have more dirt on them than they have on you.

Awe, Home!

Luckily, my brother joined me this year, and after webcaming it up with the family, where we all gave thanks that we were not Brittany Spears, we begrudgingly ended the video session. We then made our way to the Park City soup kitchen where I explained to my brother how we would spend the next 6 hours holding the homeless in our arms and spoon feeding them a milkshake of thanksgiving left overs. I would then rock them to sleep as my brother would sing in his high falsetto voice an old irish song of drifting and pan handling in heaven.

No judgement was passed, nor word said, as we passed by the soup kitchen with a shiver down our spines…(maybe christmas).

With our Thanksgiving day suddenly open we decided to do Thanksgiving right, and that means tacos! (that’s not what it means, but the first thing that came to mind) What it actually means is having others cook for you and not having to do any clean up (behold, the new tradition).

The one small draw back is that there is no medical ward attached to the restaurant where you can sleep off the three plates of stuffing that you had (delicious).

I soon found this to be a bigger drawback than previously thought as I suddenly found that eating 3/4 of your weight in turkey exceedingly impairs your driving skills. (It’s the closest I’ve ever been to being intoxicated)

The only other drawback is that there was no to-go box, which meant no left overs, which meant a small part of me died inside.

I don’t think I’ll be missing another Thanksgiving, and I’m thankful that I’m not Brittany Spears. Amen.