Tards come to Thanksgiving

The Tard Blog is a good addition. My dad has always worked with retarded kids, and sometimes he feels compelled to bring them into our home for events like Thanksgiving or birthday parties. This has been a source of horror for my mother and entertainment for me for years. Last year on Turkey Day, my dad brought home a kid who is a total spaz. He sat completely stil through the meal, and then very, very, very slowly lowered his face into his plate as if he were passing out in slow motion. He lay nose down in mashed potatoes for a good 45 seconds (can the guy breathe gravy?) and just as my mom was begging my father to "Do something for Christ's sake!" the gravy sucker starts cleaning his plate, doggie style, with no hands, licking every damn morsel up. He made little snorting noises like a piglet. I laughed till I cried, and I will never forget my father kindly taking the arm of what was now a red sweatsuit with thanksgiving dinner stuck to it, and hauling him into our bathroom to get hosed off. Later he chewed the arm off of my baby cousin's doll while he was waiting for his parents to take him away. For my money, that beats football and cranberries any day.