(continued)

REMOVABLE FEAST Your fate, should you accept that extra helping

• Plant pieces of lint between your teeth before dinner. In the middle of the meal, grin widely and ask if you have any food stuck in your mouth. When people respond in the affirmative, pull a toothpick out of your pocket and declare, "I carry one of these around 'cause I put food in my mouth, like, all the time." This will make your relatives worry that you might be obsessive-compulsive rather than someone who wants to look his or her body-dysmorphic best.

• Adopt a small Latino child. Unveil him to the family at the Thanksgiving meal. Say, "Meet Gerald." Everyone will be so shocked to meet the newest family member that they won't notice that your serving of pot roast has made like Criss Angel and vanished from the room. If they're still trying to shovel food down your throat, point at Gerald and explain that a new child always adds a few inches to the waistline, and you're trying to keep the weight off.

• Offer political motivations for your refusal to eat. Declare, "I am not eating until there's peace in Darfur." Distribute heartbreaking photos downloaded from savedarfur.org and darfurgenocide.org. Pack up as many uneaten entrees as you can in Ziploc bags and pledge to donate the booty to the people who really need it. Alternately, tie your refusal to eat to the inability of gays to wed. That's how Angelina Jolie does it.

• Comment on the quality of the offerings. "The garbanzo beans are tasty!" If someone insists that there were no garbanzo beans, produce the handful you planted in your pocket and say, "I'm hotter than you."

• Anorexics are to bulimics what Shiites are to Sunnis, Crips are to Bloods, and Red Sox fans are to Yankees. But sometimes you have to bite the bullet and eat a shitload of food and simply throw it all back up afterward. Avenge yourself upon the stuffing, turkey, the beets, the turnips, more beets, and more turnips, then excuse yourself to the bathroom and pull High Rome. You may want to consult one of these since you'll need plastic that can withstand the mighty purge.

• Baste the turkey with E. coli. Drastic, yes, but a few cases of violent diarrhea will clear both the table and you of any obligation to consume rank poultry. Besides, after a few years, the memories of Granny and the cousins doubled over the toilet like so many hogs over a trough will be transformed into a feast of memorial comedy and nostalgia. What else can one hope for in Thanksgiving but a story to tell? Even better, those who are unaffected by the E. coli can retire to the living room for some actual fun: a sporting game of Jenga over a snack of salted napkins.

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