memorable Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving, as usual, eighteen people were invited to our house for dinner. My wife had a detailed schedule of things to be done on Thanksgiving day. The first item on the agenda was to make a cheese ball. She did that, but it turned out to be a little soft, and wouldn't form a ball. She told me that this was a bad omen, but went on to item number two which was to bake a Mrs. Smith's frozen apple pie. She promptly forgot that and moved to item number three which was to place the turkey in the oven at 10:00 A.M. This she accomplished. Everything was going as planned. The turkey would be done at 2:00 P.M. a full two hours ahead of schedule. This would give it time to cool nicely before the carving. At noon we had a very brief power failure, probably less than one minute. We didn't pay much attention to it because power failures happen periodically in our neck of the woods. At 1:00 P.M. she opened the oven to baste the bird and found that the oven was cooler than it should be. The oven has digital controls, and the power failure had turned the oven off. This situation caused some anxiety to say the least. She reset the temperature and we thought, "Oh well. Dinner will be a little late. No Problemo."
WRONG! She had reset the temperature but had forgotten to push the start button. We noticed that about an hour later. Anxiety levels shot up about one hundred feet. Soon we would have eighteen people, five of them under six years old, all with stomachs rumbling, milling around the house and dinner would be at least two hours late. The company arrived on schedule and took the late dinner news pretty well. Finally at quarter of six the turkey was done. My wife then popped a caserole into the oven. This would take another half hour. Stomach rumblings were more audible now. I thought that I might need ear plugs. Right on time the caserole was done. She reached in the oven and removed it, however the fancy pot holder, that she used, had a circular wooden handle which got snagged in the oven grate. This pulled the caserole out of her hand as she raised it up, and she dumped half of the caserole on the oven door. To complicate things further, the Pyrex lid bounced onto the hard wood floor where a four year old boy was pushing his toy truck. He thought that he would help by picking up the lid. This caused an immediate scream as he got a second degree burn on the palm of his hand. Panic insued as everyone rushed the boy to the kitchen sink. The gathering at the sink reminded me of an E.R. episode where fifteen doctors and nurses gather around a gun shot victim. This emergency calmed down as the burn victim held an ice cube in his hand while walking all over the kitchen, dripping melted ice water and turning the hard wood floor into a small pond. "Okay. Let's say grace and eat!" my wife said as I reached into the oven to retrieve the rolls while using a wet pot holder. The temperature of the tip of my right index finger promptly rose to about two hundred and twelve degrees as the water in the wet pot holder began to boil. I dropped the pan on top of the caserole and ran to the sink for some cold water. I now also had a second degree burn on my finger. Wheee! What fun!!!. The dinner went well. As usual everything was great. My wife and the other women are great southern cooks. At 7:00P.M. the company decided to leave and we helped the children and elderly down the steps and they moved toward their cars. The expected cold front moved through at that precise moment along with pouring rain. The two people with canes were moving much faster than I thought possible. They looked like antique olympic sprinters! Everyone made it to the cars before they were drenched completely. Pat and I waved goodbye from inside the garage. We expected that three or four of the cars would back into the ditch just to make this day even brighter, but they didn't, and my wife and I went in the house and collapsed. " I knew that I should have called this off when the cheese ball failed!" she said. "I just knew it!" Amen! Amen!