The Good Napkins

My mother taught me to read when I was four years old (her first mistake).

One day, I was in the bathroom and noticed one of the cabinet doors was ajar. I read the box in the cabinet. I then asked my mother why she was keeping 'napkins' in the bathroom. Didn't they belong in the kitchen?

Not wanting to burden me with unnecessary facts, she told me that those were for "special occasions."

Now fast forward a few months .... It's Thanksgiving Day, and my folks are leaving to pick up the pastor and his wife for dinner. Mom had assignments for all of us while they were gone. Mine was to set the table.

When they returned, the pastor came in first and immediately burst into laughter. Next came his wife who gasped, then began giggling. Next came my father, who roared with laughter. Then came Mom, who almost died of embarrassment when she saw each place setting on the table with a "special occasion" napkin at each plate, with the fork carefully arranged on top. I had even tucked the little tails in so they didn't hang off the edge!!

My mother asked me why I used these and, of course, my response sent the other adults into further fits of laughter.

"But, Mom, you SAID they were for special occasions!"

A man goes out drinking on Thanksgiving Day, comes home tipsy, and falls asleep on the sofa, the fly of his trousers open. His teenaged sons come in a while later and decide to play a prank on Dad. They get a turkey neck out of the refrigerator and leave it dangling from his fly and go upstairs for the night.

At first light, Mom comes downstairs to find the family cat noisily munching on the turkey neck protruding from her husband's fly. She faints.

[Smith, 1983]

Two friends one night had the unenviable pleasure of assisting a third, in a very drunken state, home from the pub. By the time they reached his house he was in a collapsed state so, without waking his wife, they laid him down on the sofa to sleep it off. On the way out through the kitchen one of the friends noticed a bowl of turkey giblets and, as they were rather put out by the companion's regular drunken antics, they decided to play a practical joke on him. They took the cooked turkey neck, opened the sleeper's flies and zipped them up again with the turkey neck hanging out.

In the morning the wife of the drunken sleeper came downstairs to see where her husband had collapsed to sleep off the previous night's excesses. Imagine her dismay when she was greeted with the sight of the cat, sitting on her husband's chest chewing merrily on what she imagined to be his penis. At this point the practical joke began to backfire for, in her shocked state, the wife fainted, fell down the stairs and broke her leg.