Things I'm Not Thankful For

by Terri Kauffman

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We begin our week-long celebration of the white man's initial deception before their ultimate conquest of the Native American people with this airing of grievances for things that we, as human beings damnit, should not be thankful for this holiday season.

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Thanksgiving is a time for coming together and breaking bread with the white men who invaded your lands or the native peoples who slaughtered your friends and neighbors. It’s a time for remembering to thank the powers that be for the things and people you have, and not to dwell on the things you’ve been praying to get.

Yeah right, that’s what Thanksgiving means for those of us living in a world of puppy dogs and sugar plum fairies. But the real Thanksgiving is about football, gorging yourself on turkey and stuffing, two vacation days (three if you live somewhere where the first day of deer hunting season is also holiday), and complaining about having to spend part of that four-day weekend with your stupid family. I think there should be just one honest holiday, a holiday dedicated to being brutally honest about the other people with whom we’re forced to share our fair planet and the things in life that annoy us. Since the only such holiday that currently exists is in the fictional living room of George Constanza’s parents, I would like to take this holiday season to remember just a few of the things for which I am NOT thankful.

In no particular order:

Red arrows. I’ve got no beef with green arrows, which provide an allotted time for people making left turns to do so on busy streets without disrupting the flow of traffic. Red arrows, on the other hand, bring the flow of traffic to a screeching halt. There is no possible justification for having a red arrow at a given light preventing you from using your own judgment about when it’s safe to turn left and when it’s not, when all the other stoplights in the whole Goddamn country require that you do just that. How could it possibly be safe for us to make that decision at one intersection and not another? Unless, of course, the view of opposing traffic is obstructed in some way, but that’s another matter. While I’m on the subject of traffic, I am also not thankful for people who don’t use their turn signals, people who have those annoying bluish fluorescent headlights, people who try to go well over the speed limit in the merge lane, and people who go slow in the fast lane. Just to name a few.

I’m also not thankful for bar soap and all other archaic products that have since been replaced by a superior model that people fearing progress refuse to acknowledge. The only advantage of bar soap over liquid soap is that, for some crazy reason for which I am also not thankful, Irish Spring does not seem to make anything but a model that leaves a pool of soap scum in your soap dish, something that seems unhygienic to share with others. Also in this category, I am not thankful for chopsticks (which should have been replaced by the far superior fork), landlines (the only advantage of which is free incoming calls), and bank tellers (who have been efficiently replaced by ATMs, even though there are lines of people in banking centers around the world who think it's still necessary to conduct their banking business in person). Likewise, I am not thankful for people who pay for their groceries with personal checks or plan to use coupons that are still buried and unsorted at the bottom of their purses.

I’m not thankful for coffee. I’m sure that won’t go over well with the general population, since most everyone I know seems to be addicted to the stuff. But I have to wonder, if coffee wasn’t so popular with the majority, maybe the minority would have a foothold to lobby for a fountain soda machine in the office break room instead of a coffee maker. And perhaps the old soda shops would still be around, so I could go hang out with my laptop drinking a nice pop instead of a java mocha latte espresso blend. Other things that are popular that I am not thankful for? Beer, which tastes like fermented cat urine, pets, Palm Springs, golf, chocolate, summer and Disneyland.

So does that mean my heart is made of stone because I don’t like pets in the summer or eating chocolate at Disneyland? Not at all. I am thankful for things too. I’m thankful for my cell phone and unlimited “in” calling, for Sausage McMuffins with Egg from McDonald’s, for Charter Communications and my hundreds of cable channels, for my cable modem and access to MySpace, for my car and my job (most of the time), for my health, and, most importantly, for my close friends and family who have been the steady constant in my life and who I actually wish I could be spending the holidays with. But instead, I’ll have to settle for Vegas. Nothing says Thanksgiving like gambling, booze and smoking indoors.

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Terri Kauffman, usually seen in this neck of the woods, is also not thankful for puppies. Or happiness.