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1. I just can't groove with celebrating the genocide of Native Americans and pretending they had a "meal" with the interlopers who ruined the land, brought disease and alcohol to this country and then, eventually, tossed the whole bunch of them onto "reservations" (read: concentration camp ideology) and then started naming "states" while pretending the people we'd pushed away would be grateful for our absolutely satanic behavior.

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2. 1968: Aunt Elaine got drunk and brought in the pumpkin pie and slammed it, upside-down, on Uncle Rob's head while screaming, "Fucking Melinda next door, are ya? Enjoy, you mother fucker!"

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3. 1972: My cousin Monica brought her "fiance" to the dinner. I really liked JoAnne, but the family was silenced. For once.

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4. 1973: My cousin Kyle was busted for pot the morning of Thanksgiving and all through the meal, Aunt Liz kept saying, "Oh, I just keep thinking of Kyle, not here to enjoy this feast with us!" And later? I went outside with my other cousin, Gary, and we smoked the rest of the stash both to get rid of it and to get over Aunt Liz's dramatics.

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5. 1975: We were having "grace" when my Uncle Tommy pulled into the driveway, smacking into the back of my parents' brand-new Buick Apollo and causing a chain-reaction that wrecked seven parked cars. Thank God, my Maverick was spared.

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6. 1979: My cousin Monica announced right before the prayer that she was now Jewish. My Uncle John (not her dad) said, "So you're a lesbian Jew now?" and she smiled and said, "No, just Jewish. And I'm inviting all of you to my Bat Mitzvah!" She was twenty-three.

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7. 1981: My cousin Heather announced she was pregnant and her husband, Todd, looked at her like she was crazy and said, "How can this be? I had the vasectomy!" and then my cousin Stephanie's husband, Stephen, got all red and left the house.

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8. 1983: Heather and Stephen, now married, and their kid, Bryan, got asked to leave. They wouldn't. So everyone else did. Except me. Because Thanksgiving is a screwed holiday anyway and I might as well get some food out of the deal.

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9. 1989: My husband and I announced our own pregnancy. My cousin Heather said snidely that she did not imagine I had sex, let alone that I was big enough to give birth, being so "short and scrawny." It really hurt my feelings.

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10. 1993: My Uncle Tommy got drunk, fell in the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room and had to have seventeen stitches. Because he bled on the turkey, Aunt Wilma threw the whole thing out because HIV/AIDS was becoming known and she said "We can't know who he's fucked."

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11. 1995: My cousins Monica and Teresa got in a fight and Monica trumped the whole deal by yelling, "Well, at least I was never up in stirrups trying to have my kid aborted!" and the kid that did not get aborted after all, Kristen, was fourteen and she did the math very quickly, laid down her fork and just sat. My Uncle Bob said, "Well, Monica, I hope you're happy. This will be years of therapy. Years of therapy."

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12. 1998: My cousin Carla looked at her plate and said she could not possibly eat all of this and her husband, Keith, said, "Why not? You'll just barf it up later." Then he looked at all the rest of us, shrugged and said, "She's bulemic. What can I say?" And I left.

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13. 2001: My new sister-in-law said she had never witnessed such an unholy mess as one of our family's Thanksgiving dinners. Everyone was quiet and then my dad said, "Well, did you see 'Apocalypse Now'? That was somewhat worse."

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14. 2002: It was finally my turn to do the "prayer" and I begged God to forgive us for displacing Native Americans and...well, see #1 up there...and my Uncle Tommy told me to get the hell out of his house. But he was drunk and it wasn't his house anyway.

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15. 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006:

We weren't invited.

Yay!!!

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