Pop Vox - Turkey Day Mem'ries

As if all that dry turkey and white guilt for slaughtering the real first Americans wasn't enough to digest on Thanksgiving, we still have to deal with our families. Family means pressure, expectations, failed expectations, veiled insults, and not so veiled insults. Love and stuff are probably in there too, but who's thinking about love when your dad is shoving Grandma's face into a bowl of mashed potatoes because she shot him "that bitchy look" we all know so well? Like she did something sooo special with her life. We took to the streets to find out if your Turkey Day is as dysfunctional as ours.

VICE: Tell me about your worst Thanksgiving.
SAMANTHA: I get drunk every Thanksgiving because my family is just… boring. Once, when one of my cousins was like three years old, he ran away to our neighbor's house.

Kind of like how the pilgrims told England to fuck off and set up shop in America. Did anybody notice a missing toddler? 
We couldn't find him for a while, and then we walked to the neighbor's and he was there eating turkey with another family.

So he defected to a different clan?
Yeah, next door. But we got him back!

That's more than England can say about the colonies.

We're out here today asking people about their most horrible Thanksgiving horror stories. Got anything good?
Adrian: I'm not Dominican, but half my family is, and they believe women are second class citizens.

Just like the Pilgrims. How did those power dynamics play out?
So we get to the house last Thanksgiving and everybody's making sleeping arrangements. Our one cousin is older now, so obviously he shouldn't have to sleep in his childhood bed. Since he's a grown man, he should get the guest room all to himself.

Did you let that chauvinist dog get his way? 
Me and my sister slept on the floor in the basement and he got to sleep in the bedroom, despite the fact that he has another bed—but we couldn't sleep in that bed because that's clearly a boy's room.

Like how the British settlers had a whole continent to themselves but still wanted America and forced the indigenous peoples to "sleep" on the "floor."
Just like that.

How was sleeping on the floor?
It was nice and cold and hard.

Do you have a Thanksgiving horror story for us?
Alexander: I have a lot of restaurant Thanksgiving's in my past. And my crazy aunt is always there.

Sounds sad. What's so crazy about your aunt?
It's just every time she comes to our house someone has to take her to the emergency room because she's like dying, always, no matter what. No matter what happens she's like "I don't know if I can come because blah blah blah this infection or I fell or whatever."

Sounds pretty shitty.
And then she comes over and, after lying on the couch for an hour and moaning to herself, she's like "I have to go to the emergency room." And then someone has to volunteer. She's even ruined my sister's birthday.

So this doesn't just happen over turkey?
Whatever the family event is, she has to go to the hospital. Luckily, the ER is only two blocks away from my house, so it's a convenient trip.

VICE: Let me hear about your shittiest Thanksgiving story.
Dree: I've always made everything from scratch with my family. I ended up at somebody else's Thanksgiving one year and it was like the typical American experience. Everything came from a can. It was kind of horrifying for me.

Describe the horror. Were there any synthetic cheeses involved?
Some synthetic cheese, the yam situation, it was a very middle America experience.

Not your typical rustic gourmet affair?
No.

VICE: So tell me about your worst Turkey Day travesties.
D'Shawn: When I was about seven my Aunt used to punish us by boiling turkey wings and having us eat them with no seasoning—just boiled, unflavored. The skin, everything was just gross. To this day I can't eat turkey wings.

That sounds awful!
I'll never eat turkey wings again.

What do you eat?
As far as Thanksgiving, I'm a big fan of potato salad. Someone once put mustard in the potato salad, too. That shit grossed me out big time.

Double gross!
Yeah, I'm making myself sick just thinking about it.

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