Starting a new tradition: Thanksgiving from Hell

I’m thinking of starting a new Thanksgiving tradition.

Sure, Arlo Guthrie has his, performing “Alice’s Restaurant” every year. (All 2,974 verses of it.)

A while back, I’d spend Thanksgiving with some friends, their children and their parents/in-laws. The husband would grill the turkey outside on the back deck (sometimes in the snow, as this was in the far western suburbs of Chicago). The Greek mother-in-law would bring her own stuffing, which only she and her husband would eat. Football games blared from the TV, with people sporadically cheering and cursing at the set.

It was a wonderful free-for-all. (With a house full of Greeks and Italians, you couldn’t exactly expect a quiet Quaker Thanksgiving, or taciturn guests a la “Babette’s Feast.”)

One year, my friends’ younger daughter showed me what she had made in school: a construction-paper replica of the digestive system. She stretched it out on the living room floor, pointing out the different parts. It was complete, from esophagus to rectum.

Imagine looking at that before embarking on a Thanksgiving feast.

This year, the Web site Awkward Family Photos (www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com), which I first wrote about in June, posted a Thanksgiving letter from a woman named Marney.

Marney, to put it bluntly, has control issues. Major control issues.

From her letter, it’s obvious she’s hosting Thanksgiving. The letter stipulates what everyone should bring.

It starts out tamely enough. But then there’s the second paragraph:

“Now, while I do have quite a sense of humor and joke around all the time, I COULD NOT BE MORE SERIOUS when I am providing you with your Thanksgiving instructions and orders. I am very particular, so please perform your task EXACTLY as I have requested and read your portion very carefully. If I ask you to bring your offering in a container that has a lid, bring your offering in a container WITH A LID, NOT ALUMINUM FOIL! If I ask you to bring a serving spoon for your dish, BRING A SERVING SPOON, NOT A SOUP SPOON! And please do not forget anything.”

That paragraph is followed by one that says that all food should be already prepared, and should be hot and ready to serve, warm, or room temperature. “Those are your ONLY THREE options,” she writes.

I’m sure Marney has “quite the sense of humor,” or at least thinks she does, but for me, whatever humor she possesses is cancelled out by her admission that “I am very particular.”

Marney then goes on to give instructions to seven different families. Painfully detailed, multi-pointed exacting instructions, all delivered in a condescending, bossy tone. I’m sure if this woman could gather her family all together, she’d lecture them using Power Point, whacking the screen for emphasis, a la Gen. Patton.

For example, to the Mike Byron Family, she starts off requesting “turnips in a casserole with a lid and a serving spoon. Please do not fill the casserole all the way up to the top, it gets too messy. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but most of us hate turnips, so don’t feel like you have to feed an army.”

She also requests two half gallons of ice cream. While one has to be vanilla (excuse me, VANILLA), she claims the other can be of their own choosing, but then says it can’t be a store brand, and strongly suggests Hagan Daz Peppermint Bark Ice Cream.

She does the same with the next family, the Bob Byron Family, demanding they bring green beans or asparagus. If they’re bringing beans, it has to be FOUR pounds, but if it’s asparagus, it has to be FIVE. “It is up to you how you wish to prepare them,” she writes, then immediately orders, “no soupy sauces, no cheese (you know how Mike is), a light sprinkling of toasted nuts, or pancetta, or some EVOO would be a nice way to jazz them up.”

It goes on through four other families, with equally incredibly exacting demands.

Some of the asides are hysterical. To the Lisa Byron Chesterford Family, she says, “Lisa as a married woman you are now required to contribute at the adult level.” And to the Amy Misto Family, she adds, parenthetically, “why do I even bother she will never read this,” which made me immediately like Amy Misto tremendously, even though I’ve never met her.

To the June Davis Family, she demands “15 LBS of mashed potatoes in a casserole with a serving spoon. Please do not use the over-size blue serving dish you used last year. Because you are making such a large batch you can do one of two things: put half the mash in a regulation size casserole with lid and put the other half in a plastic container and we can just replenish that or use two regulation size casserole dishes with lids. Only one serving spoon is needed.”

I’m no chef, but isn’t 15 pounds a lot of potatoes?

And what the heck is a regulation-size casserole dish?

Marney reminds me of a house I drive by regularly. If its lawn were a person, it would have a military haircut. I’d bet money these people, if they have magazines on a coffee table, have them all stacked neatly and at exact right angles. I bet their food is alphabetized in their refrigerator. I bet their furniture is all covered in plastic.

…I bet their sink is covered in plastic!

Marney, with her obsessive-compulsive letter, makes Martha Stewart look like a slacker in comparison.

The letter, posted in July, has so far received 1,172 responses. And oh, what wonderful responses.

CVT wrote, “I wonder if these people received instructions when they arrived. ‘We will sit down for diner at precisely 1600 hours. You will smile. You will pass the salt counter-clockwise. The conversation has been scripted. Please do not improvise.”

Kathy wrote, “Ya’ll just come to my house for Thanksgiving and eat your little hearts out — leave Marney tied up on her plastic-covered sofa in front of the TV, which should be playing continuous episodes of ‘Monk.’ By the time you get home, she should be sufficiently mellowed.”

A few people wrote that they couldn’t see the humor at all in the letter; if she’s holding Thanksgiving at her house, why shouldn’t she be organized, they queried.

More than one reader compared her to the Soup Nazi on “Seinfeld.”

Alisha wrote: “I think she and my sister are one and the same!!!! Seriously, I am related to people this anal!!!! I would bring sporks just to watch that vein in her the middle of her forehead pop!”

Katy said, “I would just not bother going. No One tells me what to cook, and gets it done. I would just bring a can of cranberry sauce, the jellied kind that comes out shaped like a can, and let her be mad. I would also bring my 11 children, plus spouses, girlfriends, best friends, etc., and let them whine about how hungry they are. Anything to avoid getting a letter like that again!”

And some readers knew people just like Marney. Janyne wrote, “My MIL could have written this, but it would probably have additional instructions on where to park, when to arrive, where to hang your coat, and when we’re expected to leave.”

Someone else said they’d show up with bean dip, tortilla chips and a desert no one likes and tell Marney they thought she was joking.

Eva wrote, “Can someone say aspergers?”

Another reader, Lisa, immediately responded, “Aspergers, without cheese, because you know how Mike is.”

Other readers beg the woman who submitted the letter to write in and tell them how Thanksgiving goes, or to please submit Marney’s Christmas letter.

And while I haven’t made it through all of the responses yet, I loved this one by Misty: “I am no expert, but it would appear to me that this woman is a big steaming kettle of crazy.”

I hope, this Thanksgiving, to start a tradition of reading the letter aloud, along with some of the readers’ responses. (They could be read by many people, like one of those old-time radio shows.)

And among the many things I am grateful for this Thanksgiving is this: I’m not eating at Marney’s house.

Though I’m sure the experience would make a hell of a column. 