Thanksgiving Afterthoughts

Yesterday I was sitting in the metro on my way to go meet the mechanic. The train stopped to let in more passengers. One of which being a teenage boy with that brooding/I hate life/I'm cool because I'm miserable - look. Dressed all in black, greasy hair covering his view of the world and a cell phone blasting music that is made for teenage boys like him to annoy the world with. Oh boy, here we go, I thought. And my mind continued on a metro ride of it's own about how annoyed I was, why does he think everyone wants to listen to his crappy music??, la, la,la,la,la. I guess there's a reason why I'm better at teaching Kindergarten than High School.

So I start a little rant to Jota and he calmly, observantly and quite compassionately says while gazing over at our abnoxious neighbor, "he's just angry Sam. He's angry at everything."

Hmm, I thought.

I then eased off my tirade enough to make a joke, "I'm going to give him a pair of headphones then." I'll admit that at first I sort of meant it as a sarcastic comment and little expression of my bad attitude.

And then I remembered it's Thanksgiving. My next thought was, I wonder if I give him my headphones really just as a genuine gift. I did have two pairs after all, and I only have one set of ears.

So just as we were about to get off, I went over and offered the good pair to him. He looked up in surprise, his look so expressive it almost said, "wait, I'm not invisible? She can see me?" He looked confused. "You're giving these to me?" He wanted to know if it was a joke, or a trick or if I wanted something in return. I told him it was only a gift. Then he told me he did have his own pair, and felt almost guilty about accepting them. As I got off the train and the doors started to close I told him he could always offer them to someone else. He said a genuinely heartfelt thank you and I'll admit I was surprised. The rest of the metro car was too.

I have no idea if he actually used them . I like to think he did to save the rest of the annoyed passengers from revolting against him, but who knows.

Later on after picking up the van we went to a Chinese restaurant (the one place that was open with wifi that wasn't a McDonalds and actually served more food than just Tapas) and tried to pretend it was just as cool as a full course Thanksgiving feast.The owners were so happy that we came to their restaurant to celebrate Thanksgiving that they gave us a gift. A Chinese wall calendar and two shots of Chinese liqueur. All that combined with skype with my family and the sudden chilly weather that came blowing in and I actually felt like we accomplished pulling off Thanksgiving in Spain.

With that said, next year I'll (and Jota too!) be looking forward to turkey and all the fixin's in New England where it will actually be fall and cranberries to be found!