Turns out its Thanksgiving again. In a land as blessed as ours, I think everybody should have a nice story for Thanksgiving. Here's mine.

A while back I had to get a prescription filled- never you mind what for, you nosy parker, it's really not relevant to the story- and so I went to Kroger's, see, and it just so happens they had some deal going on: the deal being you get a prescription filled, they give you this coupon good for one free turkey dinner. Now, I'm kind of hazy on the details, but it seems to be some deal where you get a coupon good for some turkey, some potatoes, stuffing, crap like that- possibly wrapped in tinfoil or something- you throw it in the oven for a while and then Boom! what you got is one free turkey dinner. See, this was right before Thanksgiving that year.

Myself, I'm not much of a lad for turkey, what with being a vegetarian and all, and anyways I generally head to the folks' for thanksgiving dinner. Even so, I am generally loathe to see a perfectly good free turkey dinner go to waste, so I figured well what the heck, let's give this here dinner to the homeless. After all, this is the season to share with the less fortunate. And I am very generous when it comes to giving away crap that I don't have any particular use for.

Since I'm not all that fast at getting things done, it wasn't until the Wednesday that I got around to shuffling on down to the Faith Mission. I walk up to the lady at the desk. "Um, you guys have a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving, right?"

"Well, yes"

"Well see okay I got this coupon for a free turkey dinner, I thought I'd give it to you."

"Uhhhng, Thanksgiving is tomorrow you know..." she says, as I hold out the coupon.

"Yes, well I know that, see, that's why I thought I better get it here to you today."

She looks at me, takes the coupon and stares at it for a while, looks back at me.

The Faith Mission Lady looks at me with that expression which is a curious mixture of concern, bemusement, indifference and disdain, the sort of expression that only the Faith Mission ladies can ever really master. The sort of expression which, when you are on the business end of it, you know that you are SOMEBODY now. You have truly ARRIVED!

"O.K.... first of all, look, you don't need no coupon.... you just come back tomorrow.... all you got to do is go to the men's commissary, across the street, they'll take care of you..."