I'm Going To Save Your Thanksgiving
the stump: 1, your family: 0
“And the Stumpie, with their Stumpie-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without time off. It came without rest. It came without relief, solace, or jest. And they puzzled and puzzled 'till their puzzler was sore. Then, the Stumpie thought of something they hadn't before. What if holidays, they thought, aren’t peaceful at all. What if holidays, perhaps, mean constantly being on call.”
It’s that time of year again - the holidays. Stumpies, take a deep breath. You’ve come to the right place, and we’re going to prepare you together.
The holidays are a magical time full of cheer, celebration, and, of course, family. We all love seeing our family. Well, I like seeing my family. Many other people hate seeing their family. On average, we probably collectively feel neutrally about seeing our families. However, even in the most loving of families, the holidays can be a trying time. Aunt Beatrice simply must voice to you that she could “never pull off such a… bold… outfit.” Cousin Kevin isn’t eating anything “with a soul” this year, which includes cucumbers but not duck, somehow. That one uncle’s second wife has decided that she exclusively wants to talk about whatever Fox News ran on TV yesterday. Your mom is cooking like the gas bill is getting cheaper the longer the burner is on. Dad wants to watch football and Be Annoyed in the corner. Your nephew is breaking his arm as we speak.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we all could use a way out sometimes. So today, The Stump is not just a blog of words, no! The Stump is a blog of action. I’m going to save your Thanksgiving [the one with the turkey and questionable backstory for my non-American readers]. See, family time can be so hard because you either have 1) nothing to talk about, 2) things nobody wants to talk about [see: “how’s the job search going” and other classic atrocities], or 3) things you simply can’t talk about if you want to avoid contributing to holiday domestic dispute statistics. Well, fear not! I’m here to give you ten, count ‘em, ten! topics sure to stimulate the dinner table. And if your family manages to ruin these topics, you can take this as my permission to get a new one [family, not topic. don’t ever question the sanctity of my topics].
Y’know, I was just reading the most interesting article…
STOP. NO. BAD. Things are just about to take a terrible turn. Let’s redirect:
1) Home decor
This is one of your most natural options that can be strongarmed into almost any unpleasant conversation. In some ways, this is harkening back to one of our most basic instincts to look at things people are pointing at. If your sister Daisy just can’t bite her goddamn tongue and starts muttering “not in this economy” under her breath, threatening to unbalance the entire holiday ecosystem, you just appeal to everyone’s babybrain and point at the nearest piece of decor and say: “I love that lamp! It’s so retro-boho-chic! What style were you going for when you chose it?” Boom. Everyone is looking in a new direction. There’s a question on the floor, reducing the odds you’ll be ignored. And who cares if the lamp is not at all retro-boho-chic! Those words don’t mean anything! But, now you can talk about the differences between minimalism and farmhouse. Mid-Century Modern and Coastal. Blue and baby blue. HGTV-ify your family. Chip and Joanna Gaines aren’t confusingly rich because this topic doesn’t get people goin’!
2) What used to be in that building over there?
If you’re returning to a well-worn homestead for the holidays, this one is for you. People who have lived in a place for a long time love to talk about which things used to be where. “That pizza place used to be an Indian restaurant, but I heard the old owners found oil and moved to Beverly Hills.” Titillating, scintillating! It’s like gossip, but with people you don’t know and will never see again. “Remember when that park used to be a Wendy’s?” No, absolutely I do not. Remind me. The longer your family has been in one place, the longer you can milk this one. Now, a very big word of warning is that you want to avoid talking about *changes to the area* more broadly. No one has ever been happy that the place they live is different than it was when they moved in. People Hate Change. The focus should stay on structural details, business turnovers, and/or new places that people are verifiably excited about [even your most crotchety relative is unlikely to explode over the new ice cream shop].
3) Medical stories, the gorier the better.
Again, this one comes with a word of warning. Neath these waters lies danger. The goodness of a medical story as a topic of conversation is inversely related to how mundane it is. If we’re in the realm of discussing insurance - run! Red flag! If we’re in the realm of discussing that time your best friend woke up during a surgery and saw her organs on the table, we’re in business. You absolutely want to be discussing: bizarre diseases, medical mysteries, how much blood there was, what way the ankle was bending, etc. If there’s a doctor or nurse present, just ask them about the worst things they’ve seen lately [note: not saddest; worst], step back, and enjoy several hours of not having to say a word.
4) Where is the Loch Ness Monster hiding if she’s real?
I think this one is a genuine head-scratcher, so really I’m just outsourcing my curiosities to you and your family. Debating whether the monster is real is boring! Argumentative! Fruitless! Instead, consider the proposition I am laying forth for you now: the Loch Ness Monster is real, so how has she possibly evaded capture in such a relatively small body of water? Is there a system of underground caves she exploits? Is she smart enough to intentionally evade detection? I don’t think I believe in the Loch Ness Monster, but I would like to know what her strategic inclinations would be if she were. Get back to me in the comment section on this one once you’ve had a chance to run it by the family brain trust.
5) What is the strongest animal?
This topic is inspired by a real fight that I had with my first boyfriend [a devout Stump reader himself, so take that as a resounding endorsement!] during our freshman year of high school. Someone, quite unwisely, posed us - two ridiculously stubborn and contrarian assholes at the time [nowadays, who’s to say?] - the question: “what is the strongest animal?” Now, being the pedantic-and-insufferable kids we were, we quickly decided that in this context “strongest” did not mean muscular strength. Instead, we broadened the concept to more of a “strongest in the grand scheme of things.” This led to a long, long, impossibly longgggg fight about whether some sort of jungle cat, shark, elephant, etc. would beat a mosquito. This involved a variety of scenarios including imagining the two animals are trapped in a steal box, imagining the two animals are in their natural environment, imagining the two animals had to go to each other’s environments, and so on. I remember this being both our only fight and a quite vitriolic one. If you start to settle the question, change the parameters! There are no rules in poison dart frog v. polar bear.
6) Make them take the Myers-Briggs personality test
Myers-Briggs is a quite famous personality test that assigns you four letters that supposedly summarize your personality based on four traits: (I)ntroversion or (E)xtraversion, (S)ensing or i(N)tuition, (T)hinking or (F)eeling, and (J)udging or (P)erceiving [I’m generally an INTJ, for my nosy Stumpies]. Now, this test has been thoroughly debunked. It is hogwash, it is poppycock… but it’s a helluva lot of fun. You can take them from a number of unreliable online sources [here’s a link to aid in your quest] and spend hours discussing the results, comparing and contrasting family members, or talking about why your results are correct/incorrect. Bonus! This topic comes with at least several minutes of silence from any family member taking it, which means Uncle Max will stop talking with half-chewed food in his mouth for one goddamn second.
7) Gametime!
This game comes courtesy of the editor. At a recent party, the editor found himself in possession of a white board, a marker, and an idea. After silently writing things on the white board for several minutes without acknowledging the rest of us [as he is sometimes apt to do], he turned the board around and revealed a brilliant new way to conceptualize the world:
To play this game, you simply have everyone call out different people/places/things/days/objects/concepts/sensory experiences/living creatures/nonliving creatures/etc. The task is then to assign the thing to the appropriate place on each axis: fast or smooth and clown or fundamental. For example, we determined bees are medium fast and medium clown. Illinois is somewhat smooth and very fundamental. 11:37am is very smooth and very fundamental. Nicholas Cage is very smooth and somewhat clown. Run out of topics? Order some more imagination on Amazon Start trying to place each other on the scales! We only stopped playing this game when we were too physically exhausted to continue.
8) The best gadgets
Did your brother-in-law just make a weird comment? Ask him what the best gadget he owns is! I bet it’s the knife sharpener from the as-seen-on-tv commercial. Everyone loves talking about themselves, and they love talking about gadgets even more. Everyone is also always chasing That One Life Hack That Will Make Everything Okay [it does not exist. however, i do currently believe that it’s the caffeine patches i bought]. In the fit of optimistic passion about how our new gadgets will revolutionize our lives, we become content to bore others with our discoveries. This is not the sexiest suggestion on the list, but it works for any member of the family. Even your two-year-old niece will happily tell you about her new toy for hours on end. We never lose that instinct.
9) Calculate innocuous statistics
If you need another more actively engaging activity, consider calculating an innocuous statistic. This is again inspired by personal experience. In college, my roommates and I once spent a not-insignificant portion of an evening calculating how many olives I would have to eat in order to become 1% olive. The answer seemed quite doable until I got through my first fifty olives. How many pickles can fit inside the ocean? How many McGriddles would it take to produce as much radioactivity as an atomic bomb? What is the value of everything inside your house right now, including dust? This will have your relatives who consider themselves Smart positively frothing at the mouth. Google thanks you in advance for your business; the calculator app demands workers comp.
10) The Stump
Finally, we get to the pièce de résistance! If, dearest Stumpie, my miraculous advice has not improved the quality of your holiday so far, The Stump is the silver bullet in your back pocket. Love me or hate me, I can’t imagine your family members won’t have an opinion about my content. I would simply adore seeing all your beloved family members rot their brains enrich their lives by joining our family here at The Stump.
I have written about sports, magicians, music, money, bars… this isn’t just a shameless plug [ehh… 80/20], this is a genuine reminder that The Stump is here for you precisely for these situations we’re all about to find ourselves in. I couldn’t do it without you, so now I hope to return the favor. I hope you all take my bountiful wisdom and use it to have a Happy Stumpgiving, Happy Stumpidays, and a Happy Stumpyear.
The best way to spread Stumpie cheer is by buying me a coffee or beer!
I literally cannot get over the idea of bees being medium fast and medium clown
my uncle had numerous gadgets and always brought them out to share with minimal asking. I encourage all to ask about them with anyone.