Another Thanksgiving is about to roll on past, this one in a year whose repetitious digits have come to represent calamity.

Google 2020 memes if you’re in the mood for some sardonic humor.

Q. If 2020 were a cocktail, what would it be?

A. Colonoscopy prep.

Still, we still have things to be thankful for, right?^[1]

I’m thankful I retired when I did so I didn’t have to dismember my Brit Lit survey course, deep-sixing the Wife of Bath, giving Alexander his walking papers, lecturing remotely to the adolescent equivalents of Jeffrey Toobin.^[2]

I’m also thankful that even though I was reared in close proximity of Birchers who compiled lists of “card-carrying communists” that included Lucille Ball, I’m not batshit crazy enough to believe that George Soros teamed up with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez (who has been dead for seven years) to create an algorithm that via a software firm called Smartmatic switched Trump votes to Biden votes from headquarters in Spain and Germany.^[3]

I’m thankful it was I, the incredible rubber man, who stepped out on the deck that collapsed instead of other less-Buster-Keaton like loved ones. 

I’m thankful that this pandemic is not as deadly as the Ebola or the Bubonic Plague or Brady Bunch re-runs.

Yes, go ahead and call me Mr. Pollyanna. I’ve earned it.

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^[1] That is, if you’re not John Prine or Herman Cain.

^[2] “The New Yorker has suspended reporter Jeffrey Toobin for masturbating on a Zoom video chat between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio last week. Toobin says he did not realize his video was on.”  In fact, I’m thankful that I’m not Jeffrey Toobin.

^[3] The tediousness of that sentence of explanation speaks volumes. Too bad they failed to switch those Senate votes while they were at it.