Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Thankful? You'd better believe it

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Brooks Peterson

Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com

Monday, November 27, 2000

Thankful? You'd better believe it

So, all right: In a rationally ordered universe, I would have offered you my thoughts on Thanksgiving generally - and on those things for which I personally am thankful - sometime last week, during the run-up to our national festival of gratitude and gluttony.
   So sue me. It was not for nothing that I went through all that grueling training to become a Master Procrastinator.
   Of course, I am grateful for all the usual things: for finding myself in the midst of family in a nation that is at once prosperous and at peace; for a country that can still laugh at itself despite all the efforts of gimlet-eyed geeks at virtually every point on the sociopolitical spectrum to convince us that we are on the road to ruin; and, by no means least, for the availability of parts for thoroughbred British sporting motor cars.
   But what say we narrow the focus a bit?
   ? I'm (again) grateful that the weather, the airlines, the travel agents and the out-of-sorts airline workers who occasionally choose to stage job actions at awkward times cooperated sufficiently to get our son, the college man, home from Michigan for Thanksgiving. He continues to grow and mature in any number of ways - but the dogs still recognize him. (As an aside, I also appreciate the highly instructive lesson in Airline Math we got when we tried to move his departure up a day. Why, shore, the nice airline people said: It'll only cost you another thousand bucks or so. Bind that bargain fare to you with hoops of steel, neighbor.
   ? I'm profoundly grateful for having survived the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This particular 24-hour span is fraught with stress and occasional peril in any case, but for the hag-ridden wretches who crank out editorial pages and op-ed pages, it can be downright nightmarish.
   Thanks to our pals in Florida, the pre-Thanksgiving stretch was particularly harrowing: Seemed like every other minute, somebody - Democrats, Republicans, election canvassers, judges - would offer an utterance or file a motion that tossed all our meticulously calibrated assumptions into a cocked hat. (And, by the way, would whoever took my cocked hat please return it?)
   Nor did it help that the computer deities were not smiling on us Wednesday. You say the dog ate your homework? How about the computer eating your editorial? How about those stretches when . . . the . . . computer . . . s-l-o-w-s from a leisurely stroll to a halt? A controlled crash (that's one in which you have time to buckle on your parachute) set things right, but the fear-and-loathing quotient was up there for a while. Happily, our computer commandos have long since learned how to stamp out incipient panic among the troops.
   ? By no means least, I'm also grateful our little family got through a bumpy passage in the week or so prior to our rendezvous with Mr. Turkey.
   For whatever reason, the plumbing in our house decided it hadn't been getting enough attention. Water from an upstairs shower drain backed up into the (downstairs) kitchen sink. A quick call produced a plumber who snaked . . . and snaked . . . and snaked.
   Within about a day, alack, we had a replay of "Titanic" in the kitchen. Out came the mops and towels. Back came the plumber. Down went the snake. That did the job. However . . .
   When the snake had done its humanitarian work, the plumber asked me to run hot water through the sink. I rushed to comply (hey: you want to keep your plumber happy), and . . . nice, cool water. No hot water. Presto: new water heater.
   I probably shouldn't mention that on the same day the big coil spring on the garage door conked out, sending the door plummeting through the final 6 inches with a resounding KEERASH.
   Got that fixed, too - and managed to scramble through the rockslides, the erupting volcanoes, the tsunamis and forest fires to enjoy the holiday in the bosom of my family.
   Think I'm not grateful? Think again.


Brooks Peterson

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