AHHHH ... THE JOY OF THANKSGIVING!

Andrew and I are going to my parents' house in South Carolina for the rest of the week. Susie wants to go, but with Friday being the biggest retail day in the history of the whole goddamned world, she's forced to stay behind and run a cash register for 18 hours on Friday.

I feel bad because she swears she's just going to sit at home all day by herself on Thanksgiving and just relax.

One of the worst holidays I ever had was spending Thanksgiving by myself in 1981 at college. I'm not sure if I've ever written about it here and don't have the patience to research it.

I say I was "by myself", but in fact, I wasn't. I was with one of my fiercest enemies ... Barry.

Barry and I worked together at the Nashville amusement park Opryland as teens. He hated me and because he hated me, I had less-than-warm feelings for him.

We ended up going to the University of Tennessee without knowing each other would be there. It's a huge school so we never really saw each other there.

The night before Thanksgiving, we ran into each other in a bar. It had been years since we had seen each other and we were both drunk so all the hatred in the past had subsided.

Talk turned to our plans for Thanksgiving. Since my family lived in New Jersey at the time, I was going with my roommate to his family's home to spend Thanksgiving.

Barry had nowhere to go. He didn't have a ride home and was going to spend the day in his dorm room, watching football.

Thanksgiving morning as my roommate and I were loading the car, Barry walked up to our apartment.

Call it a moment of insanity.

But I told my roommate that I had changed my mind and was going to stay behind with Barry.

I guess I felt bad for the guy.

So my roommate left, leaving me with my arch-enemy to spend a family holiday with.

I only had enough money for a six pack of cheap beer and a pack of Twizzlers.

So we watched football sitting in steel folding chairs in Barry's room, eating a Thanksgiving dinner of licorice and beer.

I walked back to my apartment at about 6 in the evening and spent the rest of my night alone in my apartment.

It was just really, really depressing at the time.

A few months later, I answered an ad in the school paper where a guy was looking for two roommates. I moved in and a few days later, strictly by coincidence ... Barry moved in.

We had a great time, the three of us. Barry and I became good friends and were almost like brothers.

And then ... as was par for the course at the time, my girlfriend at the time stopped by the apartment, seduced Barry and slept with him while I was at work.

Barry moved out once my girlfriend told me about that.

I haven't thought about that in a long time. That girlfriend slept with three of my best friends while dating me.

That kinda puts a damper on relationships when your friends can't stop fucking your girlfriend.

Sooooo ... yeah. Andrew and I are heading to my parents' house tomorrow morning.

And I'm having Susie fit for a chastity belt later today.

Happy Turkey Day one and all.

(Except for you non-Americans, in which case ... Happy Thursday)