Will the Real Vegetable Please Stand Up

Today is Thanksgiving, that special day when we here in America celebrate the arrival in the New World more than 36 years ago by the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution in England, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to America. The crossing took several weeks.

To celebrate this event, it has been my tradition for the past seven years to drive from Seattle to Portland, a journey which also takes several weeks in Seattle's pre-Thanksgiving traffic. Upon completion of my journey, my friends Beth and Chris would welcome me with open arms and feed me a great Thanksgiving feast. This is how the Indians welcomed the Pilgrims when they arrived on the shores of North America. The key difference between this modern recreation and the original event is that after we ate, I would not murder Beth and Chris and their extended family, or make them walk to Oklahoma.

But Beth and Chris have ruined Thanksgiving this year. They have selfishly moved to New York, which, if you can avoid Seattle's Thanksgiving traffic, does not take much longer to drive to than Portland, but I could not do that due to rising gas prices. So I am missing my tradition of driving down I-5 at seven feet per hour, and am instead spending Thanksgiving with friends in Seattle.

I was out at a friend's birthday party last weekend, and a vegetarian at the table explained that every year on Thanksgiving, he celebrates by cooking up a tofurkey. A tofurkey is kind of like a cross between tofu and turkey, only he said it does not contain any turkey or any tofu. 

I've been thinking about this vegetarian Thanksgiving concept because vegetarians are people I have great respect for. I actually attempted vegetarianism myself several years ago, but gave it up after the cute vegetarian girl I was trying to impress kicked my butt in Scrabble. Anyway, I have decided that vegetarians should not have to eat tofurkey on Thanksgiving. They can eat turkey because turkeys are vegetables.

I don't mean "vegetables" in the sense of carrots and peas. I mean "vegetables" in the sense of their brains, which have roughly the same intelligence level as cauliflower. Aptitude tests show that turkeys have higher IQs than pumpkins, but lower IQs than tofurkeys.

According to urban legend, you cannot leave domesticated turkeys out in the rain because they will look up at the rain with their mouths open and drown. Whether this is true or not is debatable, but their basic lack of intelligence suggests to me that turkeys are not actually living creatures, except maybe in the same way that a pine cone is a living creature, and you can't get much stuffing in a pine cone.

So, vegetarians, I encourage you to eat turkey today. Eat lots of it, because it contains an amino acid called L-tryptophan, which makes you very sleepy, which will make you less likely to launch Molotov cocktails at me for writing such insensitive dribble.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Comments

[brrre]

"More than 36 years ago." You really didn't take the chance of getting that wrong, did you?

[brrre]

Sorry mate, got it. 36 equals "before I was born". I'm just being a stupid fly.

[Megan Porter]

You know nothing about turkeys. You may want to consider writing about something you actually have some insight on, or perhaps that would take away the necessity for the website. Why make yourself look stupid? No wonder she beat you at Scrabble.

[Dave Fox]

But I do know something about turkeys. I know they are delicious, especially on rye bread with bacon and guacamole.