Enjoying the Thanksgiving Afterglow in a Good Pair of Pants

Photo credit: History.com

Everything is better when overpowered by wafts of voluptuous Thanksgiving turkey roasting nearby. Especially my new pants. I purchased these pants at REI on Wednesday, full price. Although no one would admit it, we all piled in the minivan and hustled off to REI because we knew if we continued to lush about the house, Grandma would connive us into raking the yard and digging up Azalea bushes. She’s a 99-year-old Type A gardening machine.

My new pants came with a small instruction booklet because they have so many features. For example, a pulley system stowed in the cargo pockets runs down each pant leg so I can hike them up while fording streams or showing off a really bold sock. It was all good until Samantha caught me rolling up my pant legs old school and I had to admit that operating pulley system exceeds my capacity for mechanical engineering and/or fashion. Plus I’d already chucked the instruction booklet in the same garbage can as all the turkey gooplets.

If you must know, I purchased these pants to lift weights at the YMCA. Everybody knows if you lift weights in spandex you look like an unacclimated immigrant from the cardio room. I will refrain from all but a minor comment on my sneakers. Although extremely comfortable, they are pink and black. My only other color option was pristine white. The young hipster who sold them to me at Paragon favored the white, but I told him, “If you aren’t cool enough to pull off a white sneaker, you will look like an octogenarian power-walker.” Unfortunately, I’m not cool enough to pull off a white sneaker.

After my aunt, uncle and cousins showed up on Thanksgiving Day, we indulged in several longstanding holiday traditions. First, we played brutally cut-throat Chinese Checkers. Tom did not participate. He quit the tourney after Granny kicked his ass in the exhibition round.

Next came a spirited game of blow-ball. Newcomers are always a tad scandalized but we force them to play anyway.

Thanksgiving has always felt to me like it exists in some kind of welcoming, light-rinsed microclimate where time is hand-cranked and lulling. It’s peaceful and wistful and requires a quality trouser.