Ever Ready: The Main Event

Sunday, November 20, 2016

The Main Event

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas and it's only Thanksgiving time. Judging from the packed grocery stores and parking lots food must be on a lot of people's minds. The stress of holiday shopping and cooking brought to my mind a funny poem I used often in the classroom this time of the year.

The Turkey Shot Out of the Oven
by Jack Prelutsky

The turkey shot out of the oven
and rocketed into the air,
it knocked every plate off the table
and partly demolished a chair.

It ricocheted into a corner
and burst with deafening boom,
then splattered all over the kitchen,
completely obscuring the room.

It stuck to the walls and the windows,
it totally coated the floor,
there was turkey attached to the ceiling,
where there'd never been turkey before.

It blanketed every appliance,
it smeared every saucer and bowl,
there wasn't a way I could stop it,
that turkey was out of control.

I scraped and I scrubbed with displeasure,
and thought with chagrin as I mopped,
that I'd never again stuff a turkey
with popcorn that hadn't been popped.

This poem brought a recollection of the time when anarchy prevailed in our home one Thanksgiving when I was a child. My mother wanting to be super organized and on top of things as she prepared the big Thanksgiving dinner for eight children had what she thought was a great idea. After the turkey was cooked in mid-afternoon without our knowing, she instructed my father to debone the whole bird. As we all sat down for our big feast waiting expectantly for the Main Attraction, my mother proudly placed a huge platter of meat on the table. You should have seen the looks of disappointment! And then the cries of dissent arose. One could hear, "Where's the turkey? I want turkey! Where did the turkey go?"
No amount of explanations from my mother would erase the disappointment of eight children who expected a whole cooked turkey on the platter on the table. The dinner was just not the same. Well, you can be sure my mother never repeated what she thought was a great idea on Thanksgiving again. And by the way, a future learning lesson for me.