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A, B, C, and M(e)

A, B, C, and M(e)

Last updated on: December 6, 2019 at 12:01 am by Dan Peterson

A, B, C, and M(e) 2019-12-06T00:01:22-07:00 Dan Peterson

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“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth,” by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

My anonymous but indefatigable Malevolent Stalker has just posted a condemnatory analysis of the way I spent my time on Thanksgiving Day 2019. Based on his careful study of my blog posts for that day, last Thursday, he concludes that I neglected and ignored my family on Thanksgiving.

This is important to him. He cares. He cares about me. He cares about my family. He’s been closely monitoring me for fifteen years now, and commenting continually about me during that time — always negatively — online. So I want to set his mind at rest, and, at the same time, to set him another task.

My family and I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday at all.

Let me explain why.

Like several other members of the extended family, I was sick. Some family members also had scheduling problems (with other kinfolk, elsewhere) on Thursday. Furthermore, a monster snow storm was said to be coming for the day. (It turned out to be rather underwhelming, but we didn’t yet know that it wouldn’t really be, as some forecasts put it, “historic.”) So, on Wednesday afternoon, we decided to postpone our Thanksgiving observance until Sunday. We’ve never done that before, but we figured that doing so might allow some of us to feel better and to be less contagious, that it would get us past the threatened storm, and that it would permit some family members to be there who otherwise couldn’t be.

I hope that the Stalker will be relieved to know that we did, in fact, gather together as a family in Bountiful, Utah, after church on Sunday. My wife and I were there. Her father was there. So were two of her brothers and her sister. So were various spouses and children. We had a good time together. We spent quality time with each other. We ate turkey and dressing and cranberries and pumpkin pie and pecan pie and hot rolls and all of the other traditional foods of the standard American Thanksgiving.

The new task that I set for the Stalker is simply this: He needs to analyze the blog entries that I posted on Sunday, 1 December 2019, and to find fault with the way I spent that day. I know that he’s up to the task.

***

This is as good a context as any in which to mention something posted by my Mini-Stalker — a less talented Malevolent Stalker wannabe — that I noticed several weeks ago and quite enjoyed. He used just four words to sum me up, and I find the summation brilliant. I’ve reordered them a bit, as a way of remembering them, but I think that anybody who knows me well will instantly recognize how perfectly and how perfectly concisely he’s captured me:

Angry, bitter, cruel, and miserable.

I would say that these guys see right into my soul. If only I had one.

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LDS Inc. (Part Four)

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December 4, 2019 "Smithmas," again

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