Thanksgiving dinner is comin’ up this week and we’re all headin’ over to Momma’s house to eat. I don’t know ’bout y’all but my family ain’t exactly big on conversation or anything else when we get together. None of us are into football and we dang shore don’t care none ’bout no parades going up and down the streets in New York. ‘Bout the only entertainment we git is watching my brother Earl and his wife Maggie start in on each other every year. I remember last year as bein’ one of the best arguments I’d ever seen and it started with a dang fork.

Now, ya gotta understand that Earl is around 6 foot 5 inches tall and thin as that there Paris Hilton gal. Maggie on the other hand is only 5 feet tall and well… let’s just sayshe’s kinda fluffy and she ain’t got no sharp corners on her. In other words, if she sat on his shoulders they’d look like a lollipop.

Anyways, my sister Janell was to my right with her youngest little devil child Charley sittin’ on her lap. She’d been feedin’ him turkey and Doritos and lettin’ him wash it down with some of her sweet tea. Janell leaned over to the table to get herself some more cranberry sauce and that’s when everything started happening. Charley was a little over a year old and pretty big for his age. Well, when Janell leaned over, Charley slammed both hands down on the table just as hard as he could.

One of his hands hit my fork I’d just laid down a few seconds ago and I tell you what, that fork flew across the table and hit poor ole Earl right smack in the middle of his forehead. Thankfully he’d been looking down and admirin’ the big pile of mashed potatoes he’d filled up with brown gravy, makin’ what he used to call his “Mount Saint ‘Taters Volcano”. If I hadn’t seen the whole thang with my own eyes I’d have thought there was a dang Ninja hiding behind the curtains who up and threw some kinda secret Ninja throwing fork at Earl, not knowin’ that Earl’s head happens to be hard as a rock and the most useless place to hit him.

Well, Earl felt that fork slam into his face and he shot up outta his seat so fast he knocked the table and spilled his wife’s coffee into her lap. You might’ve thought that a little bit of coffee in such a whole lotta lap wouldn’t be such a big deal, but apparently that ain’t how Maggie saw it. So, there was Earl a hollerin’ and holdin’ both hands to his forehead and jumpin’ around like a skinny gorilla with a migraine headache. Maggie hadn’t seen him take that fork to the forehead so she was jumpin’ up and down and threatenin’ bodily harm like she was Hulk Hogan’s little sister or somethin’. Even though he couldn’t see her, he was yellin’ back at her to leave him alone so he could die in peace.

When you take into account the way both of them were hoppin’ around in a small space, and their differin’ physical features, it shouldn’t come as a surprise when I tell ya that things got even worse, for Earl that is. Earl wears a shoe that doesn’t even have a number size on the box, it simply says “Canoes”. He blindly slid one of his circus clown sized feet too close to Maggie and she promptly stomped on it like it was an ugly bug tryin’ to carry off her first born child. Now, it had been pretty noisy before that. Not only were Earl and Maggie carryin’ on but Jannell was tryin’ to calm Charley down as he’d started cryin’. I might’ve been laughin’ at that point but I ain’t admittin’ to nothin’. Some of the others were yellin’ at Earl to sit down and quit actin’ like a baby, and Momma was bangin’ on the table with her fist for everybody to be quiet. But once Earl felt that foot come down on his he drowned everybody out. He let out a screech so loud that old man Jenkins, who lives down in the holler and cain’t hardly hear his own self talkin’, jumped off his sofa and whirled around thinkin’ a crow had got into his house.

Later Earl told me, when Maggie weren’t around of course, that it’d felt like he’d got run over by a bulldozer or somethin’. The only good thang I could see about it was that Earl instantly forgot all about the fork wound on his forehead. He lifted his leg to grab his foot and immediately tripped and fell to the floor, bangin’ his head on the stove. By this time Maggie finally noticed what was happenin’ to her man and knelt down beside him to offer some sympathy.

I’m sorry Earl”, she said, lookin’ somewhat remorseful. “I didn’t mean to step on your foot like that. How’s your head?”

Earl shook his head like it was made of glass. When nothin’ fell off or out he looked a little relieved and replied, “I reckon I’ll live. I might have a limp for the rest of my life but that’s OK.” Maggie’s eyes lit up and for a second there I thought she was gonna make Earl scream again. But then he grinned up at her and she let that momentary thought of mayhem pass her by.

Earl calmed down when he realized he wasn’t dyin’ and just barely bleedin’. Maggie had cooled down and then she started laughin’ when she saw the line of dots on his forehead where the fork had hit him. Charley, Janell and everybody else started laughin’ with her. The only ones not laughin’ were Earl and me. Earl was mumblin’ ‘bout how he was gonna have nightmares ‘bout flyin’forks for the rest of his life, and I was a little put out ’cause now I had to get up to get me a clean fork.

This year I think I’ll sit next to Momma.