Giving thanks

by RAF KATIGBAK

Okay, I know Thanksgiving just passed and we’ve all done as Canadian tradition has dictated: we’ve roasted and stuffed the turkey, eaten massive amounts of cranberry sauce and drawn three circles with pigeon blood in a triangular formation on the highest part of our most northern facing window to ward off the Sunday night thanksgiving Manticore attack, but I’d like to take the time to give an extra special thanks. I’d like to raise my glass to parents. Not just my parents, but to all parents.

Before you young whippersnappers cry out in youthful defiance, “Parents? Why should I thank them? They don’t get my jive talking OR my raps music! I’m not thanking them for nothin’! Homie don’t play that,” listen, homie, we have a lot of things to thank our parents for. The first thing we should be grateful for is for them doin’ it, because if they didn’t boink each other, we wouldn’t be here. And that would really suck because the new Battlestar Galactica movie is coming out and it’d be tough to catch it if you didn’t exist. So stick that in your raps pipe and smoke it!

Then again, I’m not sure how thankful I really need to be for my parents doin’ it. You see, I have six siblings so I get the feeling they liked doin’ it a lot (at least seven times).

But even if I didn’t have to twist my dad’s arm to crash the ol’ custard truck into my mom’s silk sausage garage, I am thankful that I have siblings. Not simply because they’re all actually pretty nice folks with good teeth, but mostly because their names all start with the letter R. That’s right, I have four sisters and two brothers, and we all start with R.

I’m thankful because this would often end in hilarity when one of us got in trouble: my parents would always get our names screwed up when they tried to yell at us. Either they’d mismatch faces and names or take our given names and create weird mutant hybrid mash-ups. (Just like the Thanksgiving Manticore!)

I’m thankful because this is also a great tidbit to mention at parties. When I casually mention that I have six alliterated siblings, it usually ends up in a rapt table where everyone goes, “Whoa, that’s bonkers, were you raised in a cult?” or something funny like that. (Although there have been a few people who shook their heads and went, “Oh I’m sorry to hear that they’re alliterate, why didn’t they learn to read?” But they don’t count because they’re idiots).

Not only is it a humorous little icebreaker, it’s also harmless and strange enough that it can take most painful, awkward and dour conversations into a lighthearted chuckle fest. “Speaking of your tortured spiritual brothers living in pain and squalor in Guantanamo Bay, I have two brothers and four sisters, and we all start with the letter R! How crazy is that!”

While it’s great to have brothers to give me wedgies, teach me about heavy metal and take slapshots at my face when they played street hockey, I’m especially thankful that I have sisters. Everything I know about girls I learned from them (and from watching Bleu Nuit). My sisters raised me to be sensitive to the plight of the fairer sex; I learned what to do (girls like it when you have clean nails) and what not to do (never give flowers after a fight). Most of all, it gave me an appreciation of natural fiber blends, the importance of good tailoring and how to sniff out a good sale.

I’m not sure why my parents had so many kids. My only guess is that they saw The Sound of Music and the idea of blowing a whistle to watch their brood line up like little Pavlovian fascists had them drunk with power. And you know what they say about power being the greatest aphrodisiac. But it’s not like any of us could really carry a tune, plus our sense of direction is so bad, we couldn’t find our way out of a paper bag, much less across the Austrian mountain range to escape a bunch of concert-going Nazis.

Maybe they wanted to have a handball team entirely made up of their offspring. That way, they could show up to competitions and taunt coaches: “Does YOUR team carry half your DNA and have the same genetic predisposition for risk-taking and slight alcohol addiction? I don’t think so! Booyah!”

Or perhaps they intended for us to be a gang of pickpocketing street urchins that would grift our way to fame and fortune on the streets of Old Montreal, but their day jobs at a transportation company and as a property management consultant got in the way. Who knows? One thing is for sure. The liked doin’ it. At least seven times. I’m telling you.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca