Lick Your Neighbor Read Free Page A

handfuls of lard directly down our child’s throat? Or why not just deep-fry everything we eat from now on? Don’t you think that cupcake would be better if it was dipped in batter and fried in a pot of grease?”
    “Oh don’t be ridicu…you know what, that sounds good .”
    “I’m serious! Look at our son, Andie. It’s like he’s in a food coma over there. He’s not even blinking!”
    “Would you relax? It’s the holidays, Dale. You’re supposed to go into a food coma. Take gluttony out of Thanksgiving and what are you left with?”
    “Oh I don’t know, Andie, the Pilgrims . You know, the good, decent people who founded this country.” Dale walked into the adjoining kitchen and stood in front of a small portrait of a Pilgrim man on the wall. The man had a bushy black beard and wore a tall hat. An etched brass plate on the painting’s frame read ‘John Alden.’
    “And that includes my ancestor, the man who founded this very town, John Alden. These strong, wise men and women came to this country, which was nothing more than a vast wilderness filled with thick shrubbery, wild beasts, and half-naked natives, and they turned it into a great nation. With profound courage, wisdom, and industriousness they paved over the shrubbery, they put the beasts in zoos, and they made everyone cover their crotches with cotton. That is what Thanksgiving is all about.”
    “The Pilgrims, Dale? Seriously? Men with belt buckles on their hats and shoes, women in dreary black and grey dresses, all of them with somber looks on their faces? You call that a holiday? Something to celebrate? I don’t think so. But a mile-high pile of hot delicious food on the table? Now we’re talkin’. Besides, it’s our civic duty to consume as much as we can between now and New Year’s. If we don’t, our economy will tank, people will lose their jobs, crime will go up, and before you know it, people you know and love will end up mugged, raped, and naked in a ditch. All because you wouldn’t eat one measly deep fried pumpkin pudding cupcake. You work for Ferdue, you should know all this.”
    “Just because I work in poultry doesn’t mean I think people should gorge themselves on our food. Eat our chicken and turkey products, sure, but do so responsibly. I mean, do you think liquor companies want people to get drunk all the time? Don’t answer that.”
    Dale sighed as he walked back to the kitchen. “You know what, I give up. You win. We’ll have deep-fried diabetes with a side of mashed obesity for supper tomorrow. Are you done with the paper?”
    “Yep.” Andie pushed The Duxbury Times away from her. “Nothing interesting in there anyway. They didn’t even reprint the Missing poster for my Dad. You just know that if he was a kidnapped perky breasted blonde that his picture would be plastered on the front page for weeks.”
    “Yeah well it’s a real shame Silas isn’t a perky breasted blond.”
    Andie sighed. “Yeah.”
    Dale drummed his fingers on the paper. “So, uh, nothing else interesting in here, eh?”
    “Nope.”
    “No fascinating articles on the recent discovery of a three-hundred year-old diary that was written by a certain founding father who shares our last name?”
    “Oh. Your article.”
    “Did you read it?”
    Andie quickly looked away from Dale and stared at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. “I wish I could read people’s tea leaves. I wonder what mine say? I think they say that this is going to be the bestest Thanksgiving ever.”
    Dale crossed his arms. “You didn’t read it, did you?”
    “I was saving it for later. Like dessert.”
    “Or like death!” Dale snatched the paper from the table. “I don’t ask you to be genuinely interested in the work I do with the Preservation Society. All I ask is that you pretend to give a crap about my hobbies and my heritage. That’s all a man needs. The illusion of significance.”
    “In that case, I did in fact read your article, honey. And wow. Wow,