HAVE A SECOND HELPING OF FAMILY AND FRIENDS

By Steve King

Today, Thanksgiving Day, is a day for football.

Not Browns football this year, but football nonetheless. There are three NFL games on TV, and a college one as well.

So, then, it is a day for fun. Enjoy the games.

It is, of course, a day for food, too – lots and lots of it, enough, in fact, to put you into big-meal coma.

But more than anything, it’s a day for family and friends.

As such, pay attention more to those loved ones close to you than to the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints or the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

Please.

You can thank me later for telling you that.

If those people want to talk football with you, then yeah, of course, go for it.

But if they don’t, then don’t push it. Engage them on any subject they choose, even if it’s something you don’t like and/or know nothing about.

It’s just one day, and anyway, those words – those conversations – will be something all of you will carry with you going forward. They will remember you taking one for the team, so to speak, and putting them over football on your list of values, and you will know in your heart that you’ve done the right thing.

You can catch the highlights of those games any number of ways and places. But the fellowship with your Great Aunt Betty and your next-door neighbor are things you can’t replicate, or catch up on, if you pass on them today. There are no do-overs.

After all, this is a day for giving thanks, and that includes people who think so much of you that they’re willing to spend a major holiday in your presence.

People matter. They always do. And they matter more than anything else.

The other is … well, just stuff.

As much as you like, for instance, football, it is just stuff. It doesn’t breathe.

I’ll get back to that stuff – football, and specifically Browns football and their big, big game on Sunday in Pittsburgh against the Steelers – in my Friday post. But today’s Thursday, so live in the moment and give thanks for that.