The year I was a guest for Thanksgiving dinner at Yolanda's house, the meal was styled as a serve-yourself-from-the-stove meal. My eager eyes darted first to the lovely, large cast iron skillet, full of awesome white meat turkey -- which host Yolanda had even taken the time and trouble to thoughtfully differentiate from the rest of the bird in its own location. In abandonment of mannerly resistance, I transferred a generous serving onto my plate. Once seated, our Thanksgiving Prayer was made and the eating began. The turkey constituted my first stomach-destined full-fork-payload. Can't remember if it was 1 or .001 seconds before my taste buds convinced me that what I'd shoveled into my mouth was not turkey. The foreign foodstuff remained loosely atop my tongue, while I strived to maintain a perfect stillness capable to block ensuant taste perception. For what seemed like an eternity, I managed to part my lips just enough to continue the protocol requirements for polite dining, while making sure to enable the minimum volume of air-intake necessary to sustain life via mouth-breathing. I held this position until I managed to discreetly transfer "it" to my ready and waiting napkin. I proceeded to enjoy the other meal components, all the while imagining a possibility whereby at meal's end, the subsequently undisturbed "turkey" that had been staring at me from my plate would not be noticed by my dining partners. In looking back, I am convinced that any such wishfulness is inherently preposterous, as ever since my own indoctrination, you could say that I would now like to one day play the "smug bystander" in witnessing to someone else's first bite of chitterlings.
Yolanda laughed.
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