Thanksgiving dinner, of course, was always a sort of potluck affair. Everyone brought something. One time, way back in the early 1960s, my maternal grandmother, who was in her late 60s or early 70s at the time, was tasked with bringing the mashed potatoes. Bring them she did. A huge pot full of them. Far more than could possibly have been consumed, even by the crowd around the table that year.
As the family matriarch at the time, she was imperial in her insistence that everyone have at least two servings of her mashed potatoes. She urged each of us to have "just a little more," despite our being stuffed to the gills already. She paid special attention to my father, as always, since he had the audacity to marry her daughter. "Have just one more helping, George." He had demurred on that request already a few times, and did not want any more mashed potatoes, good as they were. "No, thanks, Mary," he said, one more time. He was the only member of the extended family who ever called her by her given name.
Well, Grandma wasn't pleased, and dug out another serving and plopped it on his plate. Last straw for my always-patient father. He reached across and took my Grandmother's now empty plate and began scooping out mashed potatoes and adding them to her plate. "Please have some more mashed potatoes, Mary. I insist," he said, smiling all the while. After about the third scoop, Grandma laughed and said, "I see your point, George." The laughter became universal.
That story gets retold every Thanksgiving, and still generates peals of laughter.
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