Three Days of Slinging Dice and Raising Hell, AKA Thanksgiving

Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 22, 2012

While I’ve always appreciated the “giving thanks” aspect of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., and was never ungrateful for having the days off of school and work, I’ve not always been a fan of the holiday. When I was a kid, it was actually pretty boring, and often involved people I didn’t really know and spending the day with football on the TV screen when I’ve never been a big fan of the game. It was just kind of a drag.

It came to a head my freshman year of college. I couldn’t afford to fly back to the east coast to be with my family during the weekend, especially when just three weeks later I’d be heading back for the Christmas break. My roommate was in a similar boat, and invited me spend Thanksgiving with him and some relatives who lived not too far away.

It was… terrible. The family made my own family seem “normal,” which was quite a feat. It started out with his uncle accusing me of trying to smuggle booze into the house, because, as he said at least twice, “I KNOW you college kids are always trying to do that.” My explanation that I don’t drink never seemed to satisfy him. And things got progressively weirder from there. I was pretty uncomfortable the whole weekend, though it was salvaged when another friend who was going to school in California came to town.

Many other friends at school – unable to return home due to distance and expense – shared similar stories of woe and boredom. So the following year, we decided to spend it together, instead of imposing upon whatever distant relatives might live within a fifty mile radius. As we were all gamers, we spent the entire weekend playing board games and RPGs, and eating Thanksgiving leftovers. Until Saturday night, when the leftovers were mostly gone or no longer looking so edible, where we’d order pizza… and keep gaming.

It was awesome.

We’ve been doing that ever since, and Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite holidays.

It’s morphed a bit over the years, especially as most of us started families of our own. As I got into the games industry, console games grew to replace some of the dice-slinging, especially on Thanksgiving Day itself. But it remains a day about good times with loved ones, good fun, good food, and being thankful for what we’ve got. And we’ve got a lot.

This year, between having relatives come to *us* from out of town and my wife having had surgery yesterday, it’s changed a little bit more this year. But it’s still a great day and a great weekend, and we’re still planning on spending at least one full day slinging dice and raising hell. 🙂

Good times. For which I am thankful.

Filed Under: Geek Life - Comments: 3 Comments to Read



top