Ear of Corn: What I am Thankful for This Thanksgiving

There is no US holiday that better celebrates gardening than Thanksgiving. Yeah, yeah, I know that they say it about giving thanks for what you have and all that but, when it comes down to it, Thanksgiving is about the food (and football, but I am not a big fan of football so I choose to ignore that part).

I mean, let’s face it, Thanksgiving is a celebration of food and not just food that has legs, wings and drowns in a heavy downpour. It is a celebration of food that we ~in the collective, some farmer, somewhere in the world sense~ grew.

The very first American Thanksgiving was is credited to the Pilgrims, who had a feast in the second year that they lived on American shores celebrate the fact that they had been able to grow enough food so that a majority of their population would be able to live to see another spring. Which meant a lot to those pilgrims back then, seeing as how only a minority of their population made it through the year before.

According to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, at one point in time, it was traditional for people to eat three dried kernels of corn before having their Thanksgiving feast. This was done in order to remember the starvation the Pilgrims endured the first year and to better appreciate the plenty that you would soon be passing around the table.

I am thinking of renewing the tradition in my own household this year, but for a different reason than why it was done all those years ago. I am thinking of reviving the tradition so that I can remind my children that corn is for eating and not for sticking in their ear canals.

You can take a second to re-read that last line, but just to let you know, you read it right the first time. I need to remind my kids that corn belongs in the mouth or in the ground and not in the ear. Ear of corn refers to the corn on the cob not corn stuffed in an auditory orifice.

This Thanksgiving sees my youngest child with an unpopped kernel of popcorn stuck in his ear. After a trip to the pediatrician and then Rainbow Babies ER and then an ENT specialist, the corn is still firmly lodged inside his ear and we have an appointment for him to undergo surgery next week to have it removed. All because he thought the corn would literally go in one ear and out the other. Why I would be surprised that he would think this, I am not quite sure, as most things I tell him do that very thing.

My husband has proposed that when the kernel of corn is finally removed, that we take it and have it cast in resin with the words “World’s Most Expensive Piece of Corn” and then get revenge on our son some 13-20 years later by pulling it out for every girl he brings home and embarrassing him with an animated retelling of the whole ordeal.

So there you go, if you have nothing else to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, be thankful your three-year-old does not have corn stuck in his ear. Me, personally, I am thankful that the only thing wrong with my kids is that one has corn stuck in his ear.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy the bounty of our collective world-wide garden!