Thanksgiving

There is an argument to be made that Thanksgiving should be re-named Jeffrey Day, because it contains all the things that he was most fond of. First, there is the Macy's parade, which he liked. All that holiday festivity with marching bands and balloons - who wouldn't?

Football - now, I still haven't figured out exactly how to work football into this story, because I am not a football person. Jeffrey, on the other hand, lived and breathed the Steelers. He liked the Pirates, but he LOVED the Steelers. It was Jeffrey's love of football that first convinced me just how smart he was. Jeffrey would always contend that he was terrible at math, blaming his learning disability. Then on Thanksgiving, we'd be watching a game, and someone would pop in and ask what the score was.

"Steelers are down by nine on their own 36" Jeffrey would say without taking his eyes off the game. "If they can make another 30 yards on this drive then Bahr can make a 45 yard attempt, which he's done before. Then they just need one touchdown to win. It's still the third quarter, so they can still do this." Once or twice I would point out to Jeffrey that this was, in fact, math that he was doing, and inside his head to boot, he would always reply with something like "that's not math, it's football, and you don't know that much about football - no offense!"

Oh, and turkey - give him a drumstick - two would be better - and he was a happy man indeed.