100 monkeys typing.

In which we learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving

It's Friday, and that means that America's Worst Mother™ has another banal anecdote about herself and her delightful children: Xanth, Astrid, Phen-Fen, and Auxerre. Today, Meghan realizes that it's her responsibility to have that Special Talk with her kids, the talk that parents always dread because it signals the end of innocence. It's the lesson where the parent awkwardly gives a vague, highly technical explanation about how things work, hoping to God that the child won't ask any embarrassing questions, or indeed, any questions at all. I think you know what I'm getting at here. Meghan has to explain Where The Thanksgiving Turkey Comes From.

Now obviously, Meghan's first choice would be to pawn this job off on America's Worst Father™, but it seems that Papa Gurdon has had to work late a lot ever since he got that new secretary. So he's nowhere to be found. A godless liberal parent would just let her kids learn the facts of the matter on the schoolyard, as generations of children have done. But Meghan is a above that. She writes for National Review, so she must do the honorable thing: She takes her kids to the library.

"Now, children," says the D.C. public librarian, peering over her glasses and looking around at the crowd of cross-legged children arrayed at her feet. "What do we think of, when we think of Thanksgiving?" A large gold broach glints on her chest. The radiators are blasting, the children have stripped off their sweaters, and we chaperones and teachers are loosening our collars.

A little forest of arms shoots up. "Turkey!"

So far, so good. But what Meghan forgot to account for is that this is a DC library, and that means that the librarian is a Democrat, and that means that she's a hippy, and that means that she's a vegan, and that means that she will not be giving the conservatively-correct Thanksgiving lesson that Meghan had planned on.

"That's right," affirms the librarian. She adjusts her glasses and holds up a book. "Now we are going to read a story about Thanksgiving. It is called: 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving.'"

Xanth climbs on my lap and covertly starts sucking her thumb. Phen-Fen keels over on a cushion in front of us and slips two fingers in her mouth. I think briefly of orthodontics and that joke about yachts, and leave them alone.

Google offers no relevant answers for "orthodontics and that joke about yachts" and if Meghan was thinking about the top hit for "yacht jokes" when she was looking at her daughter lying on a cushion, somebody had better call the cops.

"'Twas the day before Thanksgiving, and all through the trees…" the librarian begins, slowly unfurling out a story about a group of children who are taken to a farm to meet menacing farmer Mack Nuggett

Mack Nugget! Geddit? He's a poultry farmer and his name is MACK NUGGET!

and his flock of happy turkeys. The children frolic with the joyful birds until they encounter an axe — and the farmer explains its meaning. A few minutes later, with the farmer distracted, the children waddle, strangely stuffed, back into their bus and are driven away.

With a significant smile at the children, the librarian continues, "The very next evening, eight families were blessed… with eight fluffy Thanksgiving turkeys as guests. They feasted on veggies with jelly and toast…"

You can actually hear that old cartoon punchline Whaa whaa whaa whaaaaa sound being played here.

Meghan is suitably horrified and looks frantically around to see whether the rest of the parents are prepared to storm the barricades with her. The answer was no. There's a bit more whining from AWM, and the librarian, working under the delusion that she is there to entertain small children, leads the group in a little song-with-actions.

The librarian hits pause, and waves one finger, as if pointing to a high branch. Then, unbelievably, comes the Message, a neat little North Korean-motivational-calisthenics-cum-vegetarian touch: "When the cook came around/We couldn't be found/Five fat turkeys are we!"

That's right -- apparently singing a small song about turkeys outwitting a farmer on Thanksgiving is exactly the same thing as the North Korean government forcing people to do exercises in the town square. In a later column, perhaps Meghan will push the metaphor further by blowing the entire family food budget on Southern Comfort, forcing her children to go out into the countryside to forage for grass and twigs, just like a real North Korean child would have to do.

At this point I am goggling at the brazenness of her reeducation program, ...

Counterrevolution starts at home, so when the song is over I whisper into Xanth's ear, "I think turkeys are delicious. I am glad we have one to roast for our Thanksgiving dinner." She nods, thumb firmly in place. "Like the pilgrims had for theirs," I can't help adding, running-doggishly.

Ooooh, smash the fascist state, Meghan! The turkey-eaters of the world will rise up to overthrow the yoke of imperialist vegetarian oppression!

The librarian goes on to tell another story, and Meghan, with 600 words contracted for and only about 150 words of actual anecdote to tell, goes into further excruciating detail about the story's plot. It goes -- get this -- a woman has a turkey, and she doesn't eat it. Never saw that one coming.

The librarian beams around at the stupefied children. "That's my favorite kind of Thanksgiving story," she tells them. "The kind where the turkey doesn't get eaten."

"My favorite kind of Thanksgiving story," the well-informed boy says suddenly, "is the kind where the turkey does get eaten." I smile at him and feel a pang: He is so young

Yes, somebody had better call the cops.

"Ha-ha," says the vego-librarian. She can afford to laugh. In the course of one morning, she has skillfully indoctrinated 30 children in her cunning scheme to anthropomorphize the traditional Thanksgiving centerpiece fowl.

The poor kids, being exposed to different points of view. That's positively un-American.

"That was unbelievable," I remark to a fellow mother.

The column has a punchline. Can you possibly guess what it is? (no peeking) OK, did you guess? Here it comes:

"I know," she whispers, as if we are still under the eye of the jovial reeducator. "How many of these kids are going to want to eat their turkey after this?"

That Meghan sure keeps her cards close to her chest. Apparently, the point she was building up to is that sometimes small children have trouble dealing with the fact that the turkey they see at the farm and the turkey they have for dinner are the same thing. And the way to help children work through this is the same way an emotionally stunted suburban family deals with anything: DENIAL.

Please tune in next week for another romp through the dreary world of America's Worst Mother™. (For more AWM™ analysis, please check out TBogg or WO'C.)

Posted by dave at November 26, 2004 01:03 PM | TrackBack