Because I had trouble sleeping last night knowing that so many people will be celebrating, having a good time and enjoying themselves on this Thanksgiving Day, I decided to use the hours before the sun rises and shines down on sinners making a list of all I have to be thankful for:


* I am thankful for having lived my life the right way since I was 5 years old, and can look down my nose at others so sincerely without being judgemental.

* I am thankful for having preached to the same people as long as I can remember, and have not once been distracted by numbers, numbers and more numbers or by having to learn any new names.

* I am thankful we have never stooped so low as to allow drums, electric guitars, big video screens, tattoos, piercings, freaks or pianos into our service. Nor have we ever considered allowing women to wear pants to church except on Wednesday nights during football season.

* I am thankful my congregation values the importance of real wood pews with hard upright backs, stained glass windows, cloth-bound hymnals, mahogany offering plates, choir robes in both winter and summer colors, and real steeples playing bells every Sunday between 10:45 and 11am.

* I am thankful for having the common sense to know to wear a suit, tie and polished leather shoes with shoestrings to church.

* I am thankful for our committees who keep us on the straight and narrow, and for their cynicism which has so many times killed new ideas right off the bat, preventing us from running off the nearest cliff lickety-split just because some nut who moved here from another so-called church thinks we can fly and soar like eagles, when here in our heavenly nest is where we actually belong.

* I am also thankful for our deacons, who support and rubberstamp my authority to dismiss anything I don't like.

* I am thankful we have a real Sunday School taught by real adults for an hour every week, who aren't afraid of jerking a pure knot in any child who cuts up or forgets to memorize their lesson.

* I am especially thankful for my right-hand man and sidekick Deacon Murl, who once each summer goes to the county work farm and carries back any leftover Kool Aide and popsicles for our kids to enjoy during Vacation Bible School (I know the little ones especially appreciate this after spending all week mowing and weeding around the sanctuary on hot July afternoons.)

* I am thankful for the seniors and the apples they carry back each fall, even though most of them have eyesight so bad they can't tell the apples they give me is full of worms and don't do it intentionally, bless their hearts.

* And finally I am most thankful for my wife, who gave up long ago pestering me about having children, because after 25 years she finally understood as I do that it's only the adults and what suits them that matters to me the most.

And besides, since having children would be completely new and different from what I'm used to, I never saw no reason to do it in the first place. Which is something you all have to be thankful about every day of the year, you see.