A Tasteless Thanksgiving

In my days as a wee undergrad, I wrote a weekly column for my school newspaper. I wanted to call it "Jumbo Droppings: Little Nuggets of Wisdom," as our mascot was Jumbo the Elephant. The title was gently reworked into "Campus Comment." That pretty much summarizes what the editors did to my column. Watered it down, butchered it, a lot, a lot, a lot. To the point of not-so-clever-or-fun-in-the-slightest. Ya know, it was a straight laced organization and all. Well, most of the time this really made me mad. Anything out of step with the general "reputable" articles alongside "Campus Comment" were changed to better suit the sophisticated tone of the paper (can you hear my snooty voice as I say it?). However, one time, one such editor did indeed save my ass.

It was exactly this time of year, and my weekly column was fittingly about Thanksgiving. I would write 500 words on the topic and then quote other students (generally the funniest quotes were the ones I chose to include next to their picture). So that week I wrote about what students were looking forward to the most about Turkey Day, what they would do over their 4 day respite from college, so on and so forth. And I decided to collect some of my quotes while out at a college bar night. I got a golden quote from this one lacrosse player I was friendly with who said "I enjoy getting wasted with my cousins, because the drunker I get the hotter they get. And then I can stuff their turkey." I took his picture, and being drunk and goofy, he did look more than a little like he belonged on the short bus, fitting with the quote. It was totally inappropriate but I figured that other college kids would find it disturbing in a funny way, so I threw it in the column.

Flash forward one week. I see this guy out at a party and I tell him, "Guess what? You'll be so excited! Your quote made my column tomorrow!" He stared back at me blankly, clearly having no idea what quote I was referring to. I reminded him and he immediately FREAKED the F OUT. "I don't even remember saying that! You can't quote me when I'm black out drunk! That's totally illegal! How could you? My coach is going to kill me..."

Needless to say, my discretion was not at its best. I genuinely thought lax dude would think that was funny. He did NOT. I ran back to my room, mortified, woke up my roommate in a panic, and started scheming about how to collect all of the newspapers before they were distributed to the dorms the next morning (this wasn't that long ago, but apparently before we regularly looked online at the school newspaper). A plan was in place, I set my alarm for 6 am, ran downstairs, located the article, and found that the editor had taken out the quote and replaced it with something muchhhh tamer. I guess editors are really there for a reason, in some cases....

So, what are YOU excited about for this Thanksgiving? Your hot cousins?