By Bessie King
The holidays are here and the year is coming to an end. Christmas commercials are airing on TV, supermarkets are offering the best prices for holiday dinner needs and people are figuring out what to do for Thanksgiving. From pumpkin pie to turkey, many students have a special, and sometimes odd, Thanksgiving memory. Here are some Northeastern students’ stories.
Jell-O gives birth to a banana “Well, I was at Aunt Stella’s for Thanksgiving that year and Aunt Stella makes Jell-O in pretty molds and with fruit and all these flavors. That time, Aunt Stella decided to put a whole banana in the middle of the jell-o bowl, you know just for novelty. Dinner was done and desserts were being brought out and so we were going to eat the Jell-O. She takes a knife and goes to cut the Jell-O, but hits the banana on the tip so it doesn’t get sliced. Instead the banana zooms out of the Jell-O and lands right on top of a friend’s lap to her grossed-out amusement. So, the Jell-O kind of gave birth to the banana. That’s my Thanksgiving memory”
-Jessica Reed, freshman theater major
Cherry Pie Crisis “I was probably about 13 years old, and we were at my grandmother’s house, as usual. The time had come to make the cherry pie and I had helped make the pie crust. Everything was ready to go and when we opened the can of cherry filling for the pie, we discovered green peas inside the can. The outside of the can definitely said “Cherry Filling” and none of us could stop laughing. My dad was a fire chief at the time, and he took his truck, lights flashing and everything, as fast as he could to the grocery store that was open only for another 15 minutes … all for the sake of the cherry pie.”
-Maggie Sawada, telemarketing supervisor, Northeastern Annual Giving Fund
Roast Beef “At my house we eat roast beef for Thanksgiving besides the turkey. We always cut the ends of the roast beef though, a sort of tradition. When I was little, I remember seeing how my mom cut the ends and I asked her why she did it and she said, ‘I don’t know – it’s tradition, ask your grandmother.’ I went to ask my grandmother and then she said, ‘I don’t know it’s tradition. Ask your great-grandmother.’ So I went to ask my nana and then she simply said, ‘So it can fit in the pan.'”
-Sarah Cormeia, freshman biochemistry major
Day from hell “When I was living in France as an exchange student, one of my American friends and I decided to make a Thanksgiving dinner for our host families. Well, it was hard to find a turkey, so we just decided to cook some chicken. I asked the mother of my host family to get a chicken for me at the market. We were happy and ready to cook but then we saw the chicken – whole, skinned, beak on and everything. It was actually pretty funny after we saw it, but we didn’t end up cooking the chicken.”
-Bradford Francis, freshman international business major
Macy’s Parade “I am part of a chorus that sings and dances in the Macy’s Parade along with other choruses from the area every year. Two years ago everyone was uptight about the parade because it was the first Thanksgiving after September 11, so the Macy’s department wanted to make it a patriotic theme parade. They set up a float with the Statue of Liberty in it and chose some students and chorus members to go on it and sing and dance. I was chosen and when the parade began I was doing my thing, singing and dancing, when all of a sudden I feel the floor of the float crack. I was so scared that I didn’t move and I just kept singing all freaked out. There were hundreds of people moving and I was the only one standing still, scared and singing on national TV. So embarrassing.”
-Lauren Cataldo, freshman, journalism major
Sitting on a cactus “I guess overall my family is pretty funny, but the moment I remember most was my cousin sitting on a cactus. We were all in the dining room and she was close to the food table and she leaned back on it. It was my aunt’s house and she keeps a lot of plants around and on the table she had some cacti. My cousin literally sat on a cactus and my mom and aunt had to help her get the stuck spines out because they went through her jeans.”
-Jaime Cooper, freshman, journalism major
Floridian Thanksgiving “[My] worst Thanksgiving ever was when my sister and I went to Florida to visit my grandparents and we were flying by ourselves because our parents went on vacation. My grandmother doesn’t cook at all, let alone well. She bought a tiny turkey in a tin and then proceeded to set it on fire on the oven. We ended up ordering pizza while my grandmother apologized for ruining Thanksgiving.”
-Morgan Bass, freshman psycology major.
Flying Turkey “My mom’s friend from college was having Thanksgiving with her family and they were all in the dining room which had this big, beautiful picture window. It was time to ‘bring out the bird’ and the mother comes out with the turkey on a platter, all fancy and everything. As she is walking towards the table, she trips and tips over the platter — sending the turkey flying through the picture window and in to the backyard. The family took their napkins and some dish cloths, hurried out of the house and picked up the turkey and started dusting it from the soil and broken glass. They got some plywood and sort of covered the broken window then proceeded to eat the flying turkey anyway.”
-Amber Lea Kincaid, freshman theater major
Arrested on Turkey Day “My best friend had dinner at my house, and after we were done, I offered to drive him home in his car. It was actually his mother’s car that replaced the van he had crashed sometime earlier. We ended up getting in a car accident. My best friend’s mother was so mad that her car had gotten crashed again and that I was driving it that she told the police that I stole the car so she didn’t have more insurance problems. I got arrested and went down to the police station and, thankfully, she dropped the charges at the last minute so I was not put in jail, but, either way, she totally ruined my Thanksgiving weekend.”
-John Brideau, sophomore marketing major
