by PAMELA HULSE ANDREWS Cascade A&E Publisher

 

I awoke this morning for a devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

I’m reminded every day to be thankful for my numerous blessings from a loving and talented family, charming, loyal friends and canine companions, the generous people I work and volunteer with and the incredible place I am fortunate to live. I make a note to self: be more thankful every day.

 

And then along comes Thanksgiving where friends and families gather to eat a ton of food and join hands around the table exhibiting our thanks for the good things that happened over the year. Jon Stewart in his off the cuff humor has a slightly different take on the holiday: “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast and then I killed them and took their land.”

 

Ah yes, our Thanksgiving is not quite the same as the early settlers way of giving thanks.

 

All of this thankfulness brings to mind Jimmy Fallon’s hilarious thank you notes on Late Night every Friday. Not just once a year or once in awhile, but every Friday night he delivers thoughtful, but twisted thank yous for and about various people. If you don’t stay up late enough or haven’t recorded the show here’s a sampling:

 

Thank you, peer pressure, for being totally not cool. Unless my friends think it’s cool, then it’s pretty cool I guess.

 

Thank you, pita bread, for being a great combination between wheat and envelopes.

 

Thank you, ‘People You May Know’ feature on Facebook, for being the online equivalent of seeing an old friend in the grocery store and avoiding eye contact.

 

Thank you, 13-year-old female pitcher Mo’ne Davis, for being the break-out star of the Little League World Series and showing the world that ‘throwing like a girl’ can actually be a good thing.

 

Thank you, clouds for sometimes looking like animals and thank you iCloud for sometimes looking like naked celebrities.

 

Thank you, cattails, for being nature’s corn dogs.

 

Thank you, pencil sharpeners, for always making a good point.

 

Accordingly, I’ve grown to love this form of gratitude, especially if we actually took the time to write a few thank you notes ourselves every week. Of course we don’t that’s why Thanksgiving offers an opportunity to be especially thankful. It’s a forced, but not dreaded impulse to express our gratitude with family and friends.

 

At our house, and possibly yours, we go around the Thanksgiving table and share what we’re most thankful for over the past year. Most of us say family, friends, good health or that someone we rarely see has joined the table.

 

We have one young family member, however, that makes us twitch when he is about to speak, sorta out of the mouths of babes thanks. He’ll begin: Dear Lord we are so grateful to be gathered here today, thankful that no one is in jail this year, that my brother covered up his scorpion tattoos so mom doesn’t freak, that Auntie’s green jello didn’t jell and that I, for the first time, got to …..” He’s usually stopped before he insults everyone (but I love the humorous offering when life can be so serious).

 

For all kinds of Thanksgiving gratitude, I am especially thankful!

 

And thank you, Jimmy, for making us laugh late at night when we can barely keep our eyes open, but at least the next day is Saturday.

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