When Tradition Goes Up in Flames

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
To warm your hearts, please gather ’round the virtual fire to hear one of my favorite — if not one of the strangest — Turkey Day celebration stories, as told to me by its participants.   All parties shall remain nameless to protect their future eligibility to run for public office or secure employment.

Picture a family with three adult sisters — we’ll call them 1, 2 and 3 to make it easy.  This family is in a weird place — the parents are in the middle of an ongoing divorce, the mother is dealing with some health issues and Sister 1 is on yet another infamous hiatus from her boyfriend.  There was a general lack of merriment all around this family, to say the least.

Sister 2 decided to host the Thanksgiving festivities at the place she shared with her boyfriend in Brooklyn.  It would be just them, Sister 1, Sister 3 (home from college) and the mother.  Nobody was really in the mood but they were pulling it together.  They managed to have a nice meal.

Dessert rolled around.  Sister 2, the hostess, has always been on the non-traditional side.  With all good intentions, she decided to try to smooth out the day with her own special blend of brownies.   So, her guests had a choice between the traditional, all-American pumpkin pie or the far less conventional Brooklyn brownies.  Sister 1 quickly ingested not one, but two of these Brooklyn treats. This is where running for public office could get tricky one day.

Oh dear.

At this point, the family is watching TV in a state of we-ate-way-too-much-and-doesn’t-this-year-just-suck.  Friends comes on (a family favorite) — specifically, the Holiday Armadillo episode.  Sister 1, now in a special post-brownie place, simply cannot hold it together.  In her mind, at that moment, this is clearly the funniest scene in the history of television and she fears she may, in fact, pee her pants.  Just take a few minutes and picture her predicament.

She had to collect herself.  She went into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face.  There were festive candles flanked along each side of the sink.  She had very long hair at the time.  Oh, and she wasn’t exactly on her A-game.  Here is her inner dialogue as later described to the group:

———–

What the hell is that fireball I see creeping up the side of my head out of my peripheral vision?

What is the awful smell?  It’s like someone’s hair is on…

Fire.  Mine.  My hair is on fire.

I should do something.

I can’t believe this doesn’t hurt. 

God my hair is long.  I really could use a trim.

And that fucking Holiday Armadillo — now, that is funny.

I should put this little fire out…

———

And she did.  No real damage done.  But do you know the smell of burnt hair?  It’s vile. 

She returned to the living room.  Sister 2 and her boyfriend are yelling, wincing — “Ew, that smell.  You set your hair on fire?  Oh God, just leave.  It’s awful.”

So she leaves.  The festivities had run their course, anyway.  Sister 1 gets on the subway.  It’s packed.  Sister 2’s neighborhood in Brooklyn was “in transition” but hadn’t yet approached the good side of transition yet.  People could be sort of tough.  On this particular night, offended by the stench of charred hair, a few passengers hopped up on liquid merriment start making sniffing faces and yelling “Whose hair is burnt?  That’s fucking nasty.”

Or something like that.

Sister 1 begins to cry.  The hair, the bluesy season, the yelling on the subway, the Holiday Armadillo — it’s all too much.  Apparently. 

She makes it home.  She calls her ex — they are on a break but speaking as needed.  She tells him the whole story.  He has no idea who the fuck the Holiday Armadillo is or what she’s saying.  But he gets the gist.  He asks her if her hair looks funny.

She goes to bed and wakes up to the smell of her hair and the muddled memories of the Holiday Armadillo.  To this day, it reminds her of her family’s most unlikely and bizarre Thanksgiving on record.

From that year forward, she opted for the pie.