The following is a refurbished version of Thanksgiving 2022…
A record seven PAX showed up at the Stage….wait…no that was from Thanksgiving last year. This year, 11 PAX posted at The Den, and that wasn’t even a record! I’m tellin’ ya…this year’s PAX draft class is legendary. Anyway, Thanksgiving is a holiday that often gets overshadowed. As such, in the chaos leading up to Christmas, we can forget to take a moment to be thankful.
As my children adorably sang (sang is a strong word) Thanksgiving songs during their Pre-K performances last week, one verse stuck out to me:
“I’m a little pilgrim on the run, here is my knife and here is my gun. When I go a-hunting, hear my shout- Deer and turkey better watch out!”
I pondered about what the turkey thought about all this? I asked myself, who will speak for the Turkey? I’ll tell you who…the turkeys of F3 Thibodaux…oh and also one Goose. We would need to think like a turkey, sound like a turkey, move like a turkey, and fly like a turkey.
Wait, can turkeys fly? We would find out together. You know what they say, “Turkeys of a feather Jurp off together.”
“Nobody says that.”
“Shut your pie hole, Duke and focus on the turducken.”
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Warmarama with the regs, followed by a civic center mosey.
Today, we’re all a bunch of turkeys. But I’m proud of that fact. There are haters everywhere. They say that we’re delicious. They mock us saying gobble gobble. Their kids trace their hands on construction paper and slap some feet on them and say, “Look mommy, I made a turkey.” Like it’s a genuine Turcasso. Sorry kid, your teacher found the turkey hand template online because she’s bored and hates her job. However, she’s pissed that you used so much freakin’ Elmer’s glue when all you need is a dot. Just a dot. It’s a googly eye for crying out loud. C’mon Tana.
I could deal with all of this if it weren’t for the worst thing. They say we can’t fly. Bobby Joe, Jessie Pearl, and Popeye call us flightless birds. Flightless! Oh yeah, Bubba Sue, how the hell did I get up in this tree? Well, I say horsefeathers. They think they’re the cat’s pajamas, drinking all that giggle juice; They don’t know their onions. Until now, we’ve made a right pig’s ear of things. But that ends today. Today, we will show them a thing or two about a thing or two. We’re going to learn to fly.
Welcome to Butterball Flight Academy.
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Lesson 1: Arm and Leg Warm-up
To the tune of “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty, these parakeets did:
– 1st verse – Shoulder taps; Refrain (or chorus? Asking for an optometrist friend) – Merkins
– 2nd verse – Shoulder taps; Reforus – Mountain climbers
– Bridge – chill
– 3rd verse – squats; Extended reforus – Flying squirrels
*YHC didn’t fully understand what a flying squirrel entailed. Thank goodness we had a G- oose to set us on the right path.
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Lesson 2: Coordination and flight training – Turkeys are not completely flightless and can fly in short bursts. To work on this facet of training, the flocked did:
– Flying nuns with forward arm circles through lunges to sidewalk (approx. 20 yards)
– Jump squats X25 (at this point, YHC was questioning his…well everything)
– Mario punch skips back to start (apparently Geese just skip/run…weird)
– Bonnie Blair’s x25 (yeah, Lil’ Cuz, 25:2)
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Lesson 3: You Must Focus: Sometimes You Must Think Like a Crane, not a Turkey.
To the tune of “You’re the Best” from Karate Kid (Part 1, of course), these flamingos did:
– 1st verse – SSH; Refrain – alternating crane kicks
– 2nd verse – SSH; Refrain – alternating crane kicks
– Bridge – Speed Monkey humpers; Refrain – alternating crane kicks
– 3rd verse – SSH; Refrain – alternating crane kicks
*By the end, it is impossible to describe whatever the hell any of us were doing. They weren’t crane kicks. BUT WAIT! Is that Ralph Macchio out there? No…it’s America’s Best! Oh how I wish we would’ve had someone recording his perfect form.
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Intermission: You can only push a bunch of turkeys so far without giving them some reward. So, we took a break and like any good family thanksgiving, we had a pot-luck Mary session.
– Dilly: Leg raises
– Honeysuckle: Freddy Mercs
– Lil’ Cuz: Dolphin Hops (like a real son of turkey, but he misses Paradox, so who can really blame him…I can.)
– America’s Best: At first squats, but then someone (probably Lil’ Cuz) threw some shade about it not being an ab exercise, so AB, without missing a beat and putting on his Dad voice, said, “Ok fine. V-ups 3:1!” And we did 60.
– Popeye: He pondered for a moment, then called a lap around the civic center. At this point, Goose suggested to YHC that the concept of Mary may have been woefully unexplained to the most recent draft class.
– Wet Tap: Bird dawwwwwgs
– Pope: American hammers
*YHC had to cut the potluck short due to selective hearing. A note about MARY: There’s something about her. Abs in just seven minutes. NOT six, I said seven. Step into my office. You’re X@#$& FIRED. MARY is abs.
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Lesson 4: We Fly!
– Sprint to sidewalk with tucked wings, intermittently screeching “gobble, gobble.”
– Nur sprint back with tucked wings, screeching “elbbog, elbbog.”
– Repeato three times.
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Lesson 5: Stabilizers
Our wings are curved, our tail feathers are straight up, our bones are dense. We are fluffy, not fat. As such, our last lesson dealt with an oft overlooked facet of turkey flight training…stabilizers.
AND you’re all a bunch of soft, entitled turkeys. You don’t deserve to be comfortable…ever. You think I enjoyed hiding this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my tailfeathers…oh man…sorry. I get mixed up sometimes.
To the tune of Gobble Gobble (by Matthew West…it’s a good one), these cockatoos engaged in a combination of elbow plank holds, J-Lo’s (low plank, alternate hips touching ground), and pickle pounders (low plank with hip thrust down and up).
Together, the J-Lo’s and the Pickle Pounder are called the ARod. But for obvious reasons, this name is no longer appropriate. For the consideration of F3 Thibodaux, I offer the J-Lo Pickle Gobbler. It’ll catch on. (I wrote the same thing last year. It didn’t catch on.)
– 1st verse – Elbow plank
– Pickle pounders on “gobble”
– Reforus – J-Lo’s
– 2nd verse – Elbow plank
– Pickle pounders on “gobble”
– Extended Reforus – J-Lo’s
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Encore! Three minutes remaining
YHC deliberated with great pains on which Karate Kid song to use for the Crane Kick lesson. It came down to “You’re the Best” and “Glory of Love.” The former won out by virtue of faster cadence.
So, to the tune of “Glory of Love,” we held Mission Impossible plank for three minutes until time called at 6 am.
COT and Piccadilly prayed us out. As always, I am thankful for F3, the men of the Thibodaux FLAX, and most of all the values that we share.
SYITG and Gobble Gobble,
Turkey Jeaux
