Thanksgiving- A Working Holiday

Thanksgiving is a working holiday, but the nature of the work varies from person to person. If you are hosting a Thanksgiving dinner you may be working on preparing the house and the meal. Or you might be one of those people who have to work on Thanksgiving at a job that helps to pay the bills.

You might be the chef or hostess at a restaurant. You could be a bus driver, bag boy, cashier or guy behind the counter at 7-11. Many of us enjoy the holiday because it offers a time during which we stop working. It is a vacation from our normal lives. And that is great, as Martha would say it is a good thing.

I have several Thanksgiving traditions. One of them is a football game. It is not a game I watch, but one I play in. Every year my fraternity plays on Thanksgiving day. I started playing in 1987 and with the exception of the Thanksgiving I spent in Georgetown in 1990 haven't missed one since.

Today I lined up against a boy who told me that he was born the year I graduated from college. So I did what every guy my age would do, I kicked his ass, rubbed his nose in the mud and told him to go home and play with his Lincoln Logs. It is a man's game and we're very manly people.

Of course I don't ever want to see video footage of the game. Allow me to think that I look like a gazelle running and not some awkward, herky-jerky marionette. I glide through the line and sack the quarterback. When necessary I smash a hole in the middle and stomp the ground with all who oppose me. Please allow me to retain this simple fiction.

The game was great fun, but this year was a bit different. It was different because it was a working Thanksgiving for me. I didn't play the entire game because my partners and I took time to work on our business. It was important. It is important and I am glad that we did it.

Part of the reason that I am writing about this is because we are chronicling our journey.If fortune smiles upon us one day we will look back upon this time and talk about it. It will be a fond recollection that we will share as well as a lesson that we pass along to our children.

Success and opportunity are there for those who know how to acquire them. We happen to believe that part of the process is hard work. And we hope that there is a payoff to this hard work.

Although this is a working Thanksgiving for me I am well aware that it is not the sort of work that others are doing. In a few moments I will stop typing and head off to a much needed shower. For a few moments I'll sit inside and watch the mud caked on my arms flow towards the drain. And then I'll dry off, change clothes and head off to dinner.

I am thankful for the opportunity. I am grateful that I have a place to go. And now if you'll excuse me I really must move as the dark haired beauty has told me that I must give her two hugs and three kisses before I am allowed to eat dinner.

Five years-old and that girl is already barking orders at me like some kind of drill sergeant. It is a good thing that she is so damn cute because I don't take orders or instructions very well.

Happy Thanksgiving.