Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner Read Online Free PDF

was. The prosciutto-wrapped asparagus was the perfect blend of crisp and salty and the creamed pearl onions made me want to bury my face in the chafing dish and go at them feeding-trough-style.
    But as Fletch and I sat there at our grown-up table in our first real dining room—with a chandelier and everything!—eating a wonderful meal and drinking out of proper wineglasses, the venture into new traditions felt like a waste of time. I spent two days in the kitchen and we finished stuffing ourselves in about twenty minutes. The end result, although delicious, wasn’t worth the effort and felt like a huge letdown.
    Our other Thanksgiving option, going out to dinner alone, feels equally depressing, so we decided that our
new
new tradition is full-on denial.
    I tell Stacey, “We’re just going to be all,
‘Thanksgiving? Sorry, I think you dialed the wrong number.’
”
    Stacey keeps stealing confused glances at me while she drives. “Let me get this straight—you plan to ignore Thanksgiving?”
    “Exactly.”
    “Honey, denial is not a strategy.”
    “Pfft. Denial is
absolutely
a strategy, particularly for the kind of holidays that depress you. For example, how did you celebrate Valentine’s Day last year?”
    Stacey’s lips get all scrunchy, and her voice is clipped. “I don’t remember.”
    “See? Denial. Works like a charm. [
Please don’t worry about Stacey. When this happened, she was about four days away from meeting the man of her dreams. They got married in May 2011, and he gives her the best Valentine’s Days anyone could possibly imagine. I’m talking diamonds, champagne, and poetry. He treats her like the (bossy) goddess she is
] Can you blame me for not wanting to recognize the day because it bums me out? All holidays do. Always have. I’ve hated the time period between my birthday in November and January second since I was a kid because, without fail, every single holiday devolved into big-time family chaos.”
    “How so?” Stacey gets distressed when I bring up familial insanity, likely because she comes from a functional family where everyone not only loves each other, but actually likes one another, too. No one tells anyone else they’re fat and no one gets into a screaming match over using too much hot water, nor does anyone continue to hold a grudge about shit that happened in 1976.
    It’s so weird.
    “Give me a specific,” she prompts.
    “Let’s see… well, every year like clockwork my mother would try to punish my father because he liked being home for the holiday instead of driving seventeen hours in the snow each way over aweekend so she could be with her extended family, none of whom he liked, so that was fun.”
    “That’s it?”
    I roll my eyes. “Oh, please. We’d spend the week leading up to the holiday dealing with her sulking and pouting and I’d be all,
‘What are you, fifty?’
Then the actual day of Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter would roll around and she’d freak out because she spent so much time pouting and sulking that she’d be entirely off schedule in creating the meal. And despite having help from me, my dad, and later my sister-in-law, dinner wouldn’t be ready until ten p.m. and she’d be mad at us for complaining that we were hungry. Of course, she’d sabotage a situation already made super-tense due to starvation by unilaterally deciding madness like,
‘I’m going to make this a fat-free Thanksgiving!’
”
    Stacey blanches. “That is a crime against humanity.”
    “Right? Plus, she believed that we should be all Norman Rockwell–y and, like, sit around in candlelight and listen to carols, and you know what? That’s a lovely thought and we should pencil that in. But when everyone’s gathered in the family room and we’re all quietly enjoying each other’s company for once by hanging out and watching the James Bond marathon on TBS,
that
is not the time to yank the television cord out of the wall and demand we share our feeeeelings.