Thanksgiving

How I Saved Thanksgiving

So I'm at my local grocery store at 6:00 p.m. the evening before Thanksgiving. I've decided that if I do not make green bean casserole for Thanksgiving the "Great Chain of Being" which holds the universe together will collapse. The grocery store is a mad house. The checkout lines extend way down the aisles. Everyone has put off their Thanksgiving shopping till after work on Wednesday, and two clerks are opening great big boxes of frozen pumpkin pies and just handing them out to customers waiting in line. First, I head to the Oriental food section because my secret ingredient in my green bean cassarole is water chestnuts, which is a pretty cool secret ingredient since they are essentially flavorless. However, they do add texture as they would say on the food network. The entire shelf where the water chesnuts would be (if you roast them on an open fire would they boil?) is empty. I get down on my knees and fine one lonely can way up against the wall. It may have been there three or four years, but I grab it and my first ingredient is safe in my cart. I head to the vegetable aisle for French cut green beans, and once again I see an empty space. However, I know the shoppers in my town. I know that no one ever puts anything back where it belongs, and I begin to scan the aisles for random, misplaced cans. Surely, someone has picked one up and put it down in the wrong place! Sure enough, I find one can in the corn section and another behind two cans of okra. The second ingredient is found. Next I need mushrooms. Suspiciously, they are right where they are suppposed to be and there are plenty of them. Cocky from my string of successes I proceed to the soup aisle for one can of condensed cream of mushroom and one can of condensed cream of chicken. The Campbells soup dispenser is empty. The Hill country fare section is empty. There is no cream of mushrrom or cream of chicken soup! Only cream of celery! Who wants there green beans flavored like celery? Why not just eat celery?

This is the part where I save thanksgiving. I notice there are five abuelita looking ladies, and one harassed looking middle-aged man standing in the aisle in front of where the soup should be with their faces turned to the heavens as if they where praying to the gods from cans of soup to fall from the sky. I follow their gaze and see that they are looking at two cases of soup, still in their cases, still shrink wrapped, on the uppermost, toppermost, shelf. One is cream of mushroom and one is cream of chicken. I elbow my way through the half-circle they have made and, reaching up, standing on my tippy toes, manage to bring down both cases of soup. Gnarled old hands are already snatching for the cans before I even have them completely down. I laid the cases on the floor and grabbed one can each and left them fighting, like vultures over a dead water buffalo carcass, for the rest of the cans.

The rest was simply standing in line and swiping my debit card. Thanksgiving was saved.