Redemption song

or should i say, redemption quotes.  To redeem that ill-reputed holiday, Thanksgiving.  I'm currently enduring my last week of class for the semester (hooray) and counting down the seconds until we get to leave for Abilene, and a delightful 12 hour drive, from which I will emerge smelling of sweat, cheetos, and probably dog, but I am still dying to go.  In honor of this excitement, I've decided to forgive Thanksgiving for it previous transgressions.  

I started hating Thanksgiving when I was a freshman in college. The dorms would be empty by noon on Tuesday, and there I was, one lonely girl with a mass of yellow hair (a disastrous attempt at self-bleaching) sitting on a pile of clothes in the filthiest room in Gardner.  My mom was working at UTMB, which didn't close school until Wednesday afternoon, and since we had our Thanksgiving in Abilene, I sat and waited (and ate, one can only assume) for 36 hours until they arrived.  Some variation on this pathetic scene happened every year for the duration of my undergrad career. 

Certainly I made this waiting period more painful than it needed to be.  I had family in Abilene, but I wasn't in a socialize-with-extended-family place at the time. (well, not everything has changed.  I'm being dragged by the poorly shorn hair to the Campbell thanksgiving this year.)   Also, it was such a relief to be free of my crazy fuck of a freshman roommate, that it was nice for the first few hours.  Well, anyway, whether or not you think this merits a full blown hatred of the holiday, it happened, and there's more where that came from.  Plus, I'm slow to relinquish a grudge.  

However, this year I am going to make peace with this redundant holiday (we have a turkey at christmas, too, don't you?  so what's the big damn deal?  I'd rather have a second drinking holiday, like New Years, or Wednesday) by presenting aloud all of the wrongs Thanksgiving has wrought upon me (um, and also the Indians, I think) and by washing them away with a cornucopia of West Wing quotations. 

Anyway, because even I can't present a ten page post of WW quotes, I'll present these Thanksgiving treats in a few parts.  The reasons I can love thanksgiving again.  

CJ, to Toby and Sam: "Have either of you heard of the Jamestown Mayflower Daughters of the American Revolution Preservation Society?"

Toby: "The Jamestown Mayflower Daughters..."

CJ: "I may have gotten the name wrong. They're inviting the White House to participate in some kind of Thanksgiving Revolutionary War Reenactment"

Toby: "CJ, let's not torture American History completely to death...Jamestown was the 16th century, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth in the 17th century, the Fathers of the Daughters of the American Revolution fought in the 18th century!!!"

CJ: "Its a festival-feast of some kind! Who cares??"

Sam: "Somebody needs to learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving"

CJ: "Reenactments and proclamations and Native American corn-husk hanging ceremonies..."

--a festival-feast.--corn-hust hanging.  har har har. 

and one tragedy from freshman year floats into the land of the forgiven...