100/50 Words

’Tis the Season

Thrifty Words 100 #86 & Fifty Word Theme Challenge #107: Gratitude

Here in the U.S., whether you think of it as Thanksgiving or Thankstaking, it is the season for giving thanks.

I had a t-shirt once depicting a table laden with all the seasonal foods. Indigenous people on one side and Pilgrim-type people on the other. The caption read, “America’s first welfare line.”

I’ve got a smidge of indigenous blood in my ancestry. Just a skotch less than my dad had.

He felt very close to his indigenous roots. He ran a bulletin board in the early days of the internet. It was called Native America, The People’s Forum. The name of many Native American tribes translates to English as The People.

Personally, I don’t relate as strongly to my Native blood. I just don’t have enough. I was raised partly in Europe by my mother, who doesn’t romanticize indigenous people or their living conditions throughout history.

I do feel a little extra offended about some stuff. “Squaw” for example. I have mixed feelings about casinos. I have never lived on a Rez, but I’ve definitely lived in poverty. I take issue with the government anyway, so taking issue with its lack of recognition of sovereign nations within its own borders isn’t a very high leap for me. I have mixed feelings about cultural appropriation. I really dig looking at the “sexy Indian woman” costumes. I’ve been the sexy Indian woman for Halloween. I really don’t mind people calling other people their “tribe”. I describe groups of weirdos as “my peoples”, which is the same thing. Especially in light of the above translation.

All this backstory is to let y’all know I have a highly complex relationship with the November turkey day.

Despite my ancestry, I have other problems with the holiday. Like, why is only one day of the year designated for gratitude? I honestly believe every single day has something in it for which we all can feel grateful. It may be different for every person on the planet. If you look, you’ll find something.

So, instead of being snarky (other than the cover photo) about this national holiday, I want to concentrate on the affirmation of thankfulness. I also really love all the food. I’m an excellent cook (I’m pretty sure I’ve bragged here before). The turkey tom, TomTom, pictured above was invited into the kitchen and made a wonderfully tasty meal. Though it wasn’t in November, I felt very grateful to have the skills to process this beautiful and suddenly-violent-to-humans bird. I’m incredibly sad to not have the opportunity to raise my own meat but am very grateful to have had that opportunity for the past 12 years, to begin with.

I’m also grateful for turkey porn.

How about you? I want to know what you are grateful for, but only in exactly 50 or exactly 100 words. Feel free to wax poetic. Just stick to the word count and you can’t go wrong.

Gratitude. 50 or 100 words. Go!

Please choose either the 50-word or 100-word challenge, not both. See the guidelines for your chosen challenge below:

Remember, in order to be considered for the challenge, you need to write exactly 100 or 50 words (contractions such as ‘you’ll’ and ‘y’all’ count as one, as do articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ and all 23 auxiliary verbs ‘am’ ‘is’ ‘are’ etc. Hyphenated words count as one word.) The editors reserve the right to add or remove words to ensure the exact word count. Keep an eye on your tags as laid out in the submission guidelines above.

Please use the kicker 100 WORDS or 50 WORDS and ‘Thrifty Words 100 Challenge #86: ‘Gratitude’ or ‘Fifty Word Challenge #105: ‘Gratitude’ as your subtitle and submit by 10 pm EST on Friday 9th December.

All stories submitted by the deadline will be released the next day in the roundup. (If you miss the deadline, you may get published but you won’t go into the roundup.)