Old TG story: "The Cool Aunt"

I'm passive/aggressively pretending Blip doesn't exist until they get the Mississippi Review online archive posted. For me, getting published in MR was really important to my progress. Here's a Thanksgiving story that appeared in a politics themed issue from 2004, edited by Gary Percesepe. Al Gore was in that issue, too.

"The Cool Aunt" is about a middle class teenager from PA who decides to wear a burqa to a family gthering. It's a conventional, domestic kinda story, one of the last I ever wrote of that type. The Thanksgiving story I'm working on now is a series of flash sections with crows, ministers, and a dead kid in the attic. And yes, Donna, there is a pie.

2nd worst Thanksgiving

Yesterday was bad--trying to cope with a bad cold without meds or caffeine because of the ulcers they found Wednesday. I missed out on a hot meal, and I was EVIL, but my friends sent a care package--thank you! Today is better, and I'm even thinking of getting dressed.

So crummy but boring , especially compared to my WORST thanksgiving. That was when I was an adolescent, and my older sister, Leslie, was fresh out of the mental hospital. In the middle of the meal, she stood on her chair and announced that God was going to come down in a space ship to marry her. I was appalled, but took my cue from the dozen or so other relatives around the table who didn't even pause in their chewing and otherwise pleasant conversations. Except for my brother Sam, who could never ignore anything. He just said, "No he isn't." Like it was a normal argument. But that was Sam. It may sound like he took folks on their own terms, but in fact he took everyone on his terms--one was responsible for what one said, and being addled or compromised was irrelevant.

Guess that's pretty classic.