TED WILSON REVIEWS THE WORLD: SPACE THANKSGIVING

★★★★☆

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing Thanksgiving in space.

Space Thanksgiving is what the astronauts celebrate aboard the International Space Station. It’s a little bit creepy, knowing they are up there above us, looking down unseen, as we eat our Thanksgiving meals — sort of like they are Thanksgiving gods, though according to the Pilgrims no such gods existed.

On earth turkeys can’t fly, but in space they can at least float. I assume astronauts receive training that explains when they get to space, the things that are floating are not because of ghosts. The first astronauts must have thought space was super haunted.

Carving a turkey in space is much easier than on earth. Rather than having to force a knife through the meat, you can hold the knife out and let the turkey do the work as it spins around in mid air. This saves a lot of time and energy. Another things is that the turkey comes as a freeze-dried turkey powder, so even a dull butter knife is pretty effective.

The real mess comes with the gravy. That stuff just gets everywhere in space. This is probably super annoying to those astronauts who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. There is a lot of resentment because the Americans get the day off while everyone else has to keep doing space experiments.

For safety reasons, astronauts aren’t allowed to bring their family members on space missions. Like the time Mae Jemison brought her dad into space and he got hit by an asteroid. This precautionary measure means Space Thanksgiving lacks the family camaraderie typical for the holiday.

I think a lot of family members wouldn’t want to travel all the way into space even if they were allowed to anyway. Having to drive a couple of hours seems off-putting enough to people. If there was a rocket trip alone I bet a lot would just say never mind and stay home.

One of my favorite Thanksgivings was one where I fell asleep at the table and when I woke up everyone was gone. In space, if you wake up and everyone is gone, you know there was a terrible accident. It could be that everyone got sucked out an airlock or an alien is hiding on board and slowly killing everyone. Whatever the cause, this is not how you want to spend your Thanksgiving.

BEST FEATURE: The relatives you don’t want to show up are definitely not going to.
WORST FEATURE: The freeze-dried leftovers are indistinguishable from one another.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing a turnip.