*Insert Sexual Purring Sound Here*

Welcome, Googlers. It gives me great pleasure to have titles and/or content that I know will bring forth the strangest google-search results, like, ever.

Anyway.

Thanksgiving.

It's this week, as we all know. I, thankfully, am working all the live long day, and therefore get to miss any strangeness that my family has to offer.

This will be the first holiday celebrated without my father being alive. This will be the first holiday ever spent without either of my parents in attendance. I'm kind of glad to be spending it with a bunch of people that are too lazy or rich to cook for themselves, lest I fall into a deep, introspective depression.

As you all may remember from my Christmas post from last year (Go look it up yourselves. Sorry.), my family is not well known for their "sharing of the love", come the holidays. Thanksgiving usually involves me doing a whole lot of cooking, followed by 13 minutes of eating, and then an argument about dishes. Oh, and we mustn't forget the back seat driving.

Back Seat Driving is a familial trait on my father's side that runs rampant like freaking wildfire through all of us. It applies to any or all activities usually done alone. Driving, of course, but solitaire, crossword puzzles,jigsaw puzzles, cooking, cleaning, knitting, reading,.....anything is game. Someone attempts to do one of the aforementioned activities in the same city block as any member of my family, and suddenly.....You have an audience. Just, well, just standing there. Periodically offering a grunt, point of a finger, or sigh of direction. It annoys everyone to NO END--but we all do it. I like to think that long, long ago, in the home country, someone did this, and out of revenge, it was done back, and back again. And the retaliation continued, across the mighty Atlantic, through the generations. We are teaching it to the younger generations now--Not because it's annoying, but because we take pride in our heritage!

My father was Grand Freaking Master of the Back Seat Drive. (I would love to see the sash that comes with that title.) From the very earliest dregs of memory I have, he was doing this, and far, far better than the rest of us.

My mother, an overly opinionated woman herself, was a complete stranger to the BSD. My father did this to her nearly daily twenty years ago, and she still, STILL talks about it.

And here is a little example.

My father loved Rachel Ray. Loved her. Watched her three times a week while he was at dialysis, owned her cookbooks, and demanded that I make her recipes on a regular basis. Sure.

He decided that after watching a particularly enthralling episode of "Thirty Minute Meals", wherein Ms.Ray creates Moroccan Lamb with Cous Cous that I would reenact this meal for him in our own kitchen.

(Aside:Whoever designed the kitchen in my house was an idiot who had never cooked a meal or done a dish in their lives. It is the smallest, most strangely laid out kitchen I have ever had in my life. You can't get to the garbage if the dishwasher is open, can't get to the sink if the fridge is open, can't get to the cabinets if anyone else is even considering being in the kitchen at all--This is truly, truly a one-butt kitchen. And therefore, prime BSD real estate. Not only are you driving the person mad simply with your presence, you are COMPLETELY IN THE FREAKING WAY AT ALL TIMES. Oh yes.)

So I take a leg of lamb, and am preparing to debone it. This isn't a big deal to me, as I lived in a state where you kill your food or starve, and have dressed out and butchered and packaged plenty of animals. Deboning a lamb leg is nothing.

I get the knives out, the bowl for the cubes of meat I will finish with, the plastic cutting board. The Lamb.

I make the first cut. Suddenly, my father is standing over my shoulder. (For an old guy, he was quick there till the very end. Especially if he needed to be.) I peer back at him, he declines to make eye contact. (This is an important part of the BSD. If you make eye contact, you are opening yourself up to being asked to leave. If you pretend you just happened to be passing through, and aren't conscious of what you are doing as horribly, horribly annoying, you're free.)

The deboning continues. I make a small pile of detritus next to the cutting board, continue to add cubes of lamb to the bowl.

I finish.

My father suddenly claps a hand on my shoulder, nearly causing me to stab myself. "Good job, Babe! Well done!", he says.

"Thanks, dad. I appreciate the help."

(This is something you must always say at the end of a particularly long BSD. You are passive-aggressively acknowledging the annoyance factor, and letting the person know that you are ready for them to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM YOU!)

This particular BSD is very important. This was the first, and only, time my father took part in a BSD and kept his mouth shut. Didn't grunt, offer advice, sigh, cough, or groan. Nothing. He just stood behind me and watched me debone the lamb.

I was annoyed then. Kind of tickled when he told me I had done well, as he was a man sparse with compliments.

As much as now I wish I could have him stand behind me and berate me, even, just to have him back, I know I cannot. He lives on through the memories, and the sharing of the stories I have about him.

But how hilariously wonderful would it be for me to serve a thanksgiving dinner and then BSD the table? Family Pride, baby. Family Pride.