As a way to celebrate this, Austin's school has a free Thanksgiving dinner that's open to the whole neighborhood. We were all excited. free food in a gym AND it would probably be the first Thanksgiving thing that Austin would remember, his two other Thanksgivings being experienced in a more larval state.
Well, there was a lot to remember, all right. Normally about 100 people show up at this shindig from what I have been told. Not this year. The flyer I found in Austin's cubby told me that this dinner would start around 6pm. So I felt like maybe we would be the first ones when I tooled into the gym around 10 before 6. Not so!
As I turned the corner into the gym, my eyes were imidiately accosted by the sight of ten thousand old people, 700 vaguely homeless, lonely or crazy people, hordes and hordes of unsupervized pre-teens, not to mention all the parents of Small Children valiently holding their wiggling bundle of a three year old up high over the crowd for fear of losing them in the swirling chaos that was the gym floor. Parents who eyes were wide with terror, I might add.
At one point, I think while we were still sitting on the bleachers waiting for a spot at a communal table to open up, a man announced over the loud speaker, "DO NOT PANIC! WE WILL NOT RUN OUT OF FOOD! ANOTHER TRUCK IS ON THE WAY." Clearly this event was spiralling out of control. The loud speaker man was trying to hide the facts from us. Action need to be taken to ensure Austin his caffeteria style Thanksgiving experience.
I pilfered some plastic utensils, just for something to hold on to until the man with the bad back and possibly some sort of degeneratvie disease wobbled toward our group with the basket of cookies to keep us all calm until we could sit down at a table. Except we didn't get a cookie. Apparently my family are not fast grabbers. Because all the cookies were gone before we got a hand on even one of them. But the old/lonely/crazy lady who lives in a hotel near Bimbos who was sitting next to me WAS a good grab and offered her cookie to Austin. She said, "He can just give me the one he gets with his supper." I thought she was joking, so I smiled.
A few minutes later, the wobbly guy came around again passing out plates of food to young children. Austin got his and immediately he ate his white fluffy potatoes and his white roll. A big table opened up so David and I sprang into action and literally leaped into some empty chairs, probably knocking over 7 or 8 elderly Chinese people in doing so. But we were in THE ZONE and nothing was going to keep us away from those oversized card tables with turkey decorations in the center of each and every one.
Just then, the old/lonely crazy lady who lives in a hotel near Bimbos, a lady, who in her own words, was glad to see "people other than vagrants and children from the projects" enjoying a free Thanksgiving meal, yelled at me, "Hey, you owe me your son's cookie!" Uh, okay crazy lady, you can have my son's cookie, but you better grab it fast because a police man just walked into this Caffeteria of Craziness and is demanding to know if in fact my son's plate of food actually belongs to him or if my husband is trying to sneak a second helping.
She of course, grabbed it fast.
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