No Such Thing as Thanksgiving

I have a couple things to write about today. I'll start with Thanksgiving. Because, of course, I'm still bitter about this.

Friday was not a good day for me. I woke up in a bad mood and drove home in tears after a flat tire (it was the final straw, really). I won't go into why it was bad, but part of it was the stress of having to take down my (beautiful) turkey and find something else for the dramatic play to last three days. My turkey was cute, by the way, and very colorful (hello! Color month!).

Isn't he adorable?!?!?

Anyway, AFTER I put him up I found out that I can't have turkeys up during the week of Thanksgiving, because apparently the holiday doesn't exist. Not in our school, anyway. The reasoning is that we have too many different cultures and we might offend one of them by celebrating our holidays.

Okay, here is where liberal BS gets to me. Honestly, I'm a pretty open-minded person, and I appreciate a lot of different opinions that are liberal. This is not one of them. The way I see it, I don't travel to other countries and expect them to change their culture to avoid offending mine, and other shouldn't come into this country and expect us to change our culture. I see it as basic human courtesy.

Anyway, I don't want to go into a massive rant, I just thought I'd make this bit of my opinion known, since it is my blog. Besides, Thanksgiving is a holiday where we celebrate others coming into this country and having peaceful relations with the locals!

See? Still bitter.

One bright spot in my day on Friday was something that a lot of people I think wouldn't even notice. It was one of those small acts of kindness that you don't necessarily notice every day, but I think I did that day because I was in such a horrible mood. On my way to work, I was driving through Issaquah and I was of course stopped in the traffic light traffic. Who doesn't get stopped there? I was kind of glaring out the window, listening to some song rather than singing it, and reading shop signs. A woman was walking on the sidewalk in the same direction as I was going, and she passed this shop whose door was one direction and a pillar another. Behind the pillar (out of sight of the door) was their newspaper. She walked by it, then paused, turning back. She walked back to move the newspaper where the shopowners could see it.

I'm not saying that what this woman did was an amazing feat of kindness or anything, but I think that most people wouldn't have stopped. How often have you considered doing something simple and decided not to because it seemed like too much effort at the time? I can't even count that (mostly it's picking up my room or putting dishes in the dishwasher when the sink is so much closer). I also think most people wouldn't have even thought of moving the newspaper. I probably wouldn't have.

It's these small acts of kindness that make the world a better place. The woman didn't do it for thanks (since how would they even know someone was kind to them?). I found it inspiring, and I want to be more like that woman. I'm trying to incorporate small kindnesses into every day now.