Turkey Or Sides: A Socratic Dialogue

Taylor Kay Phillips and Felipe Torres Medina in McSweeney’s:

LAIUS: Pardon my delay, Socrates! And thank you for being such a gracious host on this feast of thanks! My chariot got delayed at Crete. I had to wait at Terminal B for two hours and I was not going to pay 43 drachmas for that pita bread with cheese the Etruscans sell.

SOCRATES: Enter, Laius. You must be famished! The turkey is nearly ready, but please help yourself to some sides.

LAIUS: Thank you for being such a gracious host, Socrates, but seeing as I have waited so long I rather will wait for the turkey to be ready.

SOCRATES: Do you not favor the sides? We have casserole of green beans slathered in Campbellios’s cream of mushroom soup and laden with Funyuns, sweet potato candied with sugar, and potatoes mashed and covered with fine goat cheese.

LAIUS: Gracious host, the sides look delicious, but without the central dish of turkey, they and the meal itself are incomplete. The turkey is, as they say, the reason for the season.

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