Any good stories about storytelling at Thanksgiving?

No--my family likes to ignore elephants and gorillas sitting in living and dining rooms. It's about polite conversation and small talk. Which I'm very bad at doing. I like pointing out the elephant and saying, "Whooeee! Would you lookat that biiiig elephant in here??"

Which isn't to say that I haven't had some interesting Thanksgiving dinners, mostly thanks to my dear mom . . .

. . . who, when we were gathered at my brother's house one year for a rather formal dinner party-ish Thanksgiving dinner, suddenly blurted out that she thought she looked a lot like Lena Horne. Who is a lovely woman! But also twenty years older than my mom, and also African-American. Other than the fact that my mom's hair is very curly and short and she likes to tan her skin(??)--there's no resemblance.

My mother took our shocked silence for a room-wide hearing problem, and so repeated herself, only louder. "DON'T you guys THINK I LOOK like LENA HORNE?"

I handled the situation with all my usual tact (which would be none, of course), "Mom, if you think you resemble an eighty-year-old woman, more power to ya. Now, please pass the potatoes?"

Advance to the next Thanksgiving, when we were again seated at a finely-appointed, formal table at my brother's house with his wife's upper-class family (I hadn't mentioned that part before, had I?) and my mom stated that she thought my brother resembled Dennis Rodman. Yeah, that Dennis. The basketball star who has tattoos and piercings and dresses weirdly and finds himself in legal/job/relationship troubles. Also happens to be black. My brother doesn't even have a tan, and his hair is at best, wavy and never been colored green, purple, or blue. He's an attorney with his own law firm and tries his best to lead a respectable life. In other words, the resemblance to Dennis Rodman would be only if he were the exact opposite of Dennis Rodman and someone mistook the negative for the photo.

By then, no one batted an eyelash--we just pretended we didn't hear her. Even when she repeated it twice. She was drowned out by everyone asking for the potatoes at the same time.

As Thanksgiving was again approaching the following year, my brother told me that he was eager to find out which black person my mom thought I resembled. I related this whole story to one of my friends who happens to be black. When I repeated what my brother said, Nicole just looked me up and down and said drily, "Shelly, you are the whitest white person I have ever met. Won't happen!"

Eight thanksgiving dinners at my brother's, later? I'm still waiting.

Mmmm. Our Thanksgiving has some elements of a good story, with enough creative re-writing. The cast of characters is suitably diverse in nearly every way, for some great elephant avoidance, especially when the seasoning of guests is thrown in.

Yes, it could work. But only as fiction. In truth, the elephants stayed under the overstuffed sofa, and it was about as colorful and intriguing as a bowl of room temperature Cream of Wheat.

LOL, Jerry--good estimate on my mom's age! She just turned 63 last week. I'm glad you enjoyed the impromptu story.

My mom is a very interesting person. She's always been a bit fanciful and not always in the same headspace as other people when everyone is in the same room.

I think that you actually did nail, in part, why my mother started those conversations. She's quite uncomfortable and intimidated around my brother's in-laws, and the stress of their company seems to push her in strange directions. She also uses (and mispronounces!) big words in her conversations, as well.

I love my mom and have a great deal of compassion for her discomfort--she and I share that same feeling of awkwardness and backwardness in public, much to my own chagrin when I say or do something a bit odd. Which inevitably happens.