I’m thinking of doing a week of Thanksgiving memories here on my blog, so we’ll start today with a cautionary note about black olives.  After that we’ll see whether I go for a whole week with this or not, but we’ll at least start out with that assumption.

Anyway, to begin, black olives always seemed to be a big part of Thanksgiving meals for my family.  When I was growing up, we always would drive down to my father’s parent’s house for Thanksgiving and have a big dinner.  The usual staples were present, i.e. turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, pie, all that.  Central, however, were the olives.

Now, most years you might not have thought that the black olives were such a big deal (black always, by the way, never green).  They were just always there.  A big crystal/glass dish of black olives.  Served by themselves, always pitted.  Sure they were enjoyed.  Always consumed in bulk, always played with.  Sometimes they ended up as fingertip decorations.  Sometimes they were jammed into belly buttons to accent disturbing belly dances.  Regardless, they were utilized.  However, you might not have thought them a big concern.

That is, you might have thought that until one particular year.  Now, as background, there were two tables for each Thanksgiving dinner.  Upstairs was the actual main kitchen table and downstairs in the basement was a supplemental table.  It started out that the basement was the kid table and the upstairs was the adult table, but this changed over the years to be the stodgy table that ate formally with my father’s parents and the fun table downstairs joined by as many people who could get away and didn’t want to eat at the stodgy table.

Enough background.  Now, this particular year those of us down at the kid table noticed there was only one dish of olives, made quick work of them, and asked for more.  Horror resulted.  You see, that one can of black olives was supposed to be for the entire celebration.  We had eaten them all.  We were upset that there were no more, but not as upset as the upstairs who had not gotten any.

Now, I said that I never thought that black olives were all that important, but why was there only one can purchased for a dinner that was attended by possibly twenty or thirty people (I’m not sure of the exact number, it varied from year to year and I don’t feel like counting)?  If only one can was purchased, who in their right mind would send it down to the kid table first?  Certainly without any notice that some of the olives were expected to come back from the basement?  It baffles the mind.  Regardless, there was only one can and it went to the kid table first with no warnings or caveats.  Double regardless, we ate (or played with them to the point of no one desiring to consume them any longer) them all.

Strangely, this formed the central theme for this particular Thanksgiving.  Adult table versus kid table and the battle of the olives.  The kids unknowingly won that battle, but tensions continued to seethe.  It even took precedence over other normal issues such as how Tom Osborne should run his football team, whether certain family members should be classified as bi-polar, whether anyone besides grandpa wanted to listen to John Philip Sousa records (no, but that didn’t matter as it turns out), whether everyone was quiet enough during grandpa’s nap, and so on. 

In the end, I think the takeaway is never buy only one can of olives and never send food to one table first at a multi-table affair where the food is expected to go to the other table next without warnings and notices.  Even with warnings and notices, I still wouldn’t chance it.  Families are a dangerous enough affair without adding olive oil to the fire.