There is little in the world that I look forward to more than Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving: where the food is more than a staple, it is the centerpiece. Where reckless abandon abounds as you fill your plate with mounds of buttery potatoes, heaps of green beans, thick slices of turkey smothered with gravy and cranberry sauce, complete with mountains of stuffing. “I’ll go to the gym tomorrow,” you think to yourself as you go back for your second, third, fourth plates of food. Where it is acceptable to outgrow a pair of pants in the course of a single night. Where it is allowed, and in fact encouraged to eat until your body can legitimately no longer function and shuts down, forcing you into a “food coma.” “There’s tryptophan in turkey,” you mumble as you fall asleep on Grandma’s couch, pie crust crumbs still dusting your lips. However, perhaps the only thing more dreaded than the day-after calorie calculation (where you discover to your horror that you probably consumed enough to feed a small African village for a month) is the “Thanksgiving Interrogation.”
The Thanksgiving Interrogation is a time-honored tradition and ordeal that has been endured by hundreds of generations. It has every college aged student yearning to crawl back to the kids’ table, where the topic of discussion usually revolved around absurd claims and double-dog-dares. Instead, we are subject to the endless questioning of aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, and even our own parents about our current life plans and the looming inevitability of the future. The Thanksgiving Interrogation makes the Spanish Inquisition look easy, trifling in comparison.
It usually begins simply enough: an innocent inquiry about classes, a harmless question about your friends, perhaps a benign comment about your love life…But once it begins it cannot be stopped. The questions start coming like an avalanche, and no amount of food shoveled rapidly into your mouth can save you from answer. “So tell me, what have you been up to lately? How is your love life? What is your major again? English? And what exactly are you planning on doing with that? What are your post-college plans? I saw a picture of you on Facebook yesterday. Are you sure you’re not partying too much? How is your financial situation? And who are dating? No one? Well, you better find someone quick. You only have four years of college after all…” The questions come, and come, and come and soon you are buried, smothered by onslaught. There is little else to do but murmur inconclusive remarks, nod your head, and pray for the end—when you can go back to ignoring the threatening inescapability of “tomorrow.”
We are college students. Tomorrow will come, and odds are we will procrastinate thinking about our plans for as long as humanly possible (much like every paper we have ever written). To all who must endure these questionings, take comfort in the fact that it will all be over soon, and you will be back at school before you know it.
...But brace yourself, because Christmas dinner is right around the corner.
