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Surprisingly, everything came out splendidly! Until of course, dinner was over and I was carving the rest of the turkey to divvy up between Kylee and myself, at which point the phone rang.

Kylee answered it for me and then stuck it between my ear and shoulder. It was my mother calling to wish me a happy Thanksgiving. It then took about three seconds for me to almost drop the phone, go for it with one hand and in the process, send the entire turkey carcass flying across the kitchen and into the living room.

After a startled "shit!" a dropped phone, and a quick dive-and-pick-up, the turkey was back on the platter, the phone was in the sink, and Kylee was on the floor laughing so hard she couldn't even help me clean up the damn carpet.

I apologized to my mother for the swear, told her I'd call her back and went about doing some cleaning up and... brushing off. Two second rule--the turkey's fine.

So my first turkey dinner ended up okay, with only one slightly scary event. The apartment isn't burnt down and neither Kylee nor I came down with botulism so all seems to be in order.

In any event, I called my mother back about an hour later and asked her how Thanksgiving went back at the homestead.

She proceeded to tell me that my step-sister had brought a friend home from school with her, who was Taiwanese and had never experienced an American Thanksgiving. Now, I'm not sure how to spell the girls name, so from here on out I'm just going to do it phonetically. Fooroo, as it were, had only been in the States for a few months and hadn't ever ventured north of Ann Arbor into Northern Michigan. So, going to my parents house on a lake up north was probably pretty cool for her. My mother went on further to explain that she was completely fascinated with my step-dad's oatmeal and even took a picture of it. My grandfather kept calling her Froufrou, and then my mother dropped the bomb that they'd taken some turkey to my uncle's house, and had taken Fooroo with them.

At this point, I stopped the conversation. The uncle in question is an awesome, awesome guy who I love, but is also... very Northern Michigan. This is a man who showed up to my school in 3rd grade and took me out of class to go ice fishing. I completely adore him, but for an Asian woman who had only been in the States for a few months, I thought the experience might be a bit... culture shock-y. The rest of the conversation went a little something like this.

Mom: So then we took some turkey over to Uncle Jerry's and took Fooroo with us.

Me: Wait. You took her to Uncle Jerry's?!

Mom: Heh heh. Yes.

Me: Wow, thats... Wow.

Mom: Yeah, we introduced him to her and he told her he'd just call her Sam. So he did.

Me: He called Fooroo Sam for the rest of the day?

Mom: Yep. And she'd never shot a gun before, so we shot some of Uncle Jerry's pistols.

Me: You had her shoot Uncle Jerry's laser-sighted handguns?

Mom: And then he took her on an ATV ride, and had her drive.

Me:... She didn't kill herself, did she?

Mom: No, she's okay. We think. She's been kind of quiet.

Me: She's probably afraid of you all, mother.

So it was a Thanksgiving of firsts all around.