(Gratitude. Guilt. Cranberries.)
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Here in America, it’s Thanksgiving again. Now shut up and eat. And then shop. Otherwise, the terrorists win.

Once again, the holiday season is upon us, and that means holiday-season-shopping is in full swing, despite the wailing jeremiads from the agenda-driven media doom-crows. According to that cheery bunch, nobody can eat, or drive, or stay warm, or afford gas, or find wrapping paper or buy bows – but the holiday season somehow continues.

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“Hmm. Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas means a little bit more.”
— the grinch
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Here in America, during this festive holiday season, we all take a somber pause to wonder what “festive” means, and to try and figure out why we only drag that word out of our collective thesauri once a year. I mean, you never hear anybody rhapsodizing about a “festive” mid-August humidity scar. At least not in countries patrolled by Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel.

But every year, here at year’s end, we all focus on the things that make us thankful … and, to be honest, the things we could, you know, possibly, maybe do without, thank you very much. For instance, I’m not at all thankful that YouTube has started injecting advertisements right in the middle of a Christmas carol … however, I am thankful that I don’t know where YouTube lives, because I’m armed. (Think “motive and means? Yes, Your Honor. But no opportunity.”)

Things I’m Thankful For

• I’m thankful that people don’t ride me for ending phrases with a preposition (phrases like, say, “Things I’m Thankful For”)
• I’m thankful for music. Except Burl Ives.
• I’m thankful that the Chinese virus is finally under control. Oh, wait.
• I’m thankful that holiday-season marketers have finally cobbled up enough honesty to refer to Black Friday as something more realistic, like Black Trimester
• I’m thankful that I live in South Carolina, where out-of-control inflation can’t ruin a festive holiday-season meal, partly because roadkill can be either a Thanksgiving entrée, or one of the “fixin’s.”
• I’m thankful that I’ve not succumbed to the atrocity of using “ask” as a noun
• I’m thankful that my handy grocer now provides a handy service to deliver groceries to my home, at least on those rare occasions when the handy delivery dude doesn’t handily deliver my stuff to a house half a block away.
• I’m thankful that I once could hold my breath for over 250 days. Then I was born.
• I’m thankful, or at least fascinated, that I once held my new baby brother’s breath for over 30 seconds. Then my parents walked in. I was not thankful for what happened next.
• I’m thankful that everybody I run into has to wear a mask, because I was getting so tired of actually seeing people’s facial expressions.
• I’m thankful that I once held a bag of alleged oregano for a friend. The friend was thankful, too, privately, though to the arresting officer he denied knowing me. Unfortunately, the arresting officer was Italian, so the “oregano” alibi quickly went thin.
• I’m not entirely thankful that I created a diversion by proposing to the Italian officer’s daughter. But it was necessary.

But there’s more to my “thankful” list story. Shortly after my analyst, Forlorne Greene, heard me open up about the Italian officer story, he insisted I schedule a couch visit to air a few of my more troubling sources of gratitude.

Unhealthy Things I’m Thankful For, According To My Therapist

Me: I’m thankful that I still get chills every time I hear Steely Dan sing, “Aja – when all my dime dancing; is through, I run to you.”

Forlorne: Tell me about Steely, your mother.
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Me: Once upon a time in high school, while trying to simultaneously drive and kiss a girl, I drove my parents’ Buick Electra 225 into a ditch. I’m thankful because, as everybody knew back then, you couldn’t die in a “deuce and a quarter.”

Forlorne: Your date’s lawyer just called. I recommend you feign total ignorance of all products made by General Motors.
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Me: I’m thankful that Albert Einstein did not just settle with allegedly proving that his gravitational equations held for arbitrarily moving reference systems, thus confirming the hypothesis of the equivalence of acceleration and gravitational fields. Otherwise, as George Bush pointed out, the terrorists win.

Forlorne: Your observation might have been more impressive, had you not pronounced the famous physicist’s name “eensteen.”
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Me: I’m thankful that our next President may be some dwarfish career lackey named Pete Beetlejuice, whose entire list of qualifications seem to consist of having been a mayor of Podunk, and being able to get out of a closet with impaling himself on a clothes hangar.

Forlorne: Honestly, you seem more thankful for some of these things than for others. Plus, you’ve never actually been to Podunk.
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Me: I’m thankful that my grocer’s handy delivery service, instead of delivering the vanilla wafers I ordered, somehow brings me three boxes of an alleged breakfast cereal named “Poop Like A Champion.”

Forlorne: You’re making that up.

Me: Dude, this is a humor column. I’m making you up.

Forlorne: Okay, our time is up for today. See you next Tuesday.
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Forlorne Therapy Sidebar: Actually, there really is such a breakfast cereal. It’s near the Raisin Bran. Maybe too near.