The Daily Lobo is so excited about Thanksgiving that we decided to scrap real reporting for the week and find the most horrific Thanksgiving stories imaginable.
In hearing these stories, the hope is you that you will be able to withstand Thanksgiving, even if your grandma still insists on showing the family that rash again before dessert.
The following stories are are things to not be thankful for — or to be thankful for, depending on your perspective. Names were changed to protect the innocent.
The WTF Thanksgiving story
They were expecting turkey but got goose eggs instead.
Burt Wurtzel’s family was on the way to his grandparents’ house with the entire Thanksgiving dinner packed inside with his brother and parents. Wurtzel said since his extended family brought little to the table, the car was loaded to the ceiling with the feast.
“We have relatives who are cheapskates,” he said. “They would literally show up with not a dish, not a casserole, an unopened can of green beans as their contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.”
Several months earlier, Wurtzel had attached a small explosive to the brake pedal, one of many pranks. It had never gone off, and he had forgotten about it until his dad slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a car. The explosion forced him to swerve onto the curb at 30 mph.
“That’s when all hell broke loose,” Wurtzel said. “There was just food flying everywhere. It was on the windows. It was just everywhere. The windows were up, so no food left the car. It just splattered everywhere all over the inside.”
His dad regained control of the car, and besides being shook up and bruised from glass baking pan collisions, his family was unharmed. They ate a dinner from KFC.
The awkward conversation that never ends
“I was with family that I’m usually not with, and we all decided to have a huge Thanksgiving together,” student Maria Tellez said. “We were talking, and we got to the subject of movies. They started to talk about the movie ‘Milk,’ which had just come out. And, so far as I know, I am the only gay one in my family. Everyone started cutting it down and saying it was terrible and that they couldn’t even watch it. And I was just sitting there, thinking, ‘Oh my God.’”
The family fight
Isabel Oates faced a bad Thanksgiving while working at Circuit City. She found herself in a quarrel with her father on a ride home from work.
“My mom freaked out because he was fighting, like always, and my mom goes, ‘You’re ruining everything. Why can’t we have a nice Thanksgiving?’ and throws the spaghetti strainer at him,” Oates said. “Then, about a month later, we find out he’s cheating on her, and now they’re still trying to get a divorce.”
The misbehaving father
Five years ago, student Michael Faweks’ Thanksgiving was anything but peaceful.
“It was just my immediate family so there was nobody there for my dad to behave for, so he wasn’t very good,” Faweks said. “He just screamed the whole time at us for spending money. … It was just a lot of screaming and fighting and not getting along.”
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The getting hit on at Thanksgiving despite your best intentions
Maria Bows would rather spend her Thanksgiving alone.
“So basically, my mom’s best friend’s son tried to ask me out a couple times, which I avoided,” Bows said. “So he was there for the last two Thanksgivings in a row — the most awkward Thanksgivings of my life because I pretty much avoided being around the family.”
Yes, Thanksgiving can suck, but the only solution to get through this hectic day is to grin, bear it, and grudgingly wait for it to happen next year. Or go out for a pack of smokes and never come back. Or become a vegetarian and avoid turkey. Or become a Jehovah’s Witness and stop celebrating holidays. Or move to China where they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Either way, you have a lot of options, so quit complaining.
