I wish I could hibernate during Thanksgiving
The New Hotness
By Chhun Sun
The Collegian
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Besides the delicious food that usually makes my 115-pound frame almost explode into a million pieces, Thanksgiving with my family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Yes I do enjoy quality time with my family who I don’t see quite so often, although they only live about 100 miles away. And yes, I do like the fact that I don’t have to spend money for the weekend and get free food.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. When I take that one-and-a-half hour drive to Modesto I will have to mentally prepare myself for sheer embarrassment.
My parents never miss an opportunity to drive me crazy. They make me want to run into a wall and fall into a four-day coma and wake up just in time to go back home to Fresno.
Or better yet, they make me want to do the choreography to Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step I Take” music video, with the spandex too.
They tell stories. My parents tell embarrassing stories about me. And of course they tell the same stories over and over again to the same relatives. And each time they laugh like it’s the first they’ve heard those stories.
I don’t get it. I just smile and secretly cry inside, not uttering a word.
 Before I go on, I must say my parents tell these stories with the intention of reminding people how cute I used to be.
Then again I don’t see anything cute about how I used to jump in front of an automatic door just to see it open and close. Or how I tried to hide a rose in my room from my parents, even though they said they knew I would give it to my special girl at school the next day. Or how I used to walk to the corner store with only my Superman underwear on.
No, it is not cute, it is embarrassing. Those are memories I would rather wipe from my memory. But I don’t say anything. I just find myself stuffing my face with stuffing.
Then again, it’s different now. This is my opportunity for payback.
My parents are cute, too.
Whenever our family traveled, my mother would prepare enough food to last for a weekend-camping trip in Yosemite. Even if it was a 30-minute ride to Stockton, my mom would have at least nine cooked chicken wings, rice and a gallon of water.
In December of 1999, my mom heard news about Y2K and that it’d send the people of the world into hysteria. She was told by her friends to get ready for it.
“Go to Costco and buy everything you can,” a friend of my mom’s said. She bought enough food to feed the Nutty Professor’s family. When Jan. 1, 2000 arrived, nothing happened. “It’s OK,” my mom said, considering the fact we had enough food for the year. Yes, that was cute.
What was even cuter was my father’s obsession with the flea market. He would go almost every weekend to get a bookshelf or plates for a quarter.
One time, my father was looking for a travel bag to put his suits in whenever we trekked long distance to Stockton. He found one at the flea market for no more than a dollar. He went home happily thinking he got a deal. Or so he thought.
There were weird stares when he bought the travel bag, but he couldn’t figure out why. Then one day he was watching the 6 o’clock news and noticed a bag on TV that looked very much like the one he had in his closet.
It was a body bag.
Now that’s a cute story.
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