The First Pitch

[For those who asked… ]

Every family has their Thanksgiving traditions. Our more pedestrian ones call for the dressing to be made from sourdough bread, my father’s favorite creamed pearl onions to be on the table even though he is the only one who eats them, and any and all carrots present must be maple/mustard glazed. But a few years back, at a Thanksgiving dinner at my oldest sister’s home, a new tradition was started.

First, a little background on my oldest sister, JAC, and her husband, SJC. JAC is employed as a cheesemonger at an upscale grocery store and is the family’s resident “gourmet”. She is also, for lack of a more complimentary term, a grazer. She nibbles all day long. She’ll even pick at the food on anyone’s plate that is within somewhat reasonable reach, but for her to share the food off her own plate… nope. And she never serves anyone enough food at one sitting to really satisfy the appetite. There are definite food control issues at play (I won’t even go into “The Cereal Incident” and its aftershocks that can still be felt to this day).

My brother-in-law has also battled with control issues most of his life, but his are mainly anger-related. I am quite proud at the progress he has made over the years (such as he no longer rams other cars with his car), but my sister can try the patience of a saint. So back to Thanksgiving…

JAC had gone to great lengths to procure some special pâté to serve as an appetizer before the big dinner. When she brought it home from the store earlier in the week, she had pointed it out to SJC and specifically told him the reason it was in the house.

So Thanksgiving afternoon rolled around, appetizers were removed from the refrigerator and JAC noticed that something was amiss with the prized pâté. Not only had it been opened, but “someone” had removed a huge chunk from the middle. My sister went ballistic.

In front of everyone, she started in on SJC with how she had explicitly told him why she had bought the pâté (to which he replied that she never told him he could not eat any beforehand). Then she moved on to why he could not have just take some off one end instead of digging it out of the middle (to which he replied that it was just food).

My sister opened her mouth to start in on the third installment of her tirade when SJC picked up the offending pâté, carried it out to the back deck and chucked it about twenty feet into the woods. The problem was solved, JAC closed her mouth and a family tradition was born.

The following Thanksgiving, my other brother-in-law provided a set of custom made wings to help that year's pâté to be more aerodynamic.