This is not an exhausted list by any means. Get creative. There are so many more ways you can accomplish this without even trying, but if you need a little inspiration for the holidays, mothers and children alike, you are welcome.
1. Repeatedly ask her when dinner is going to be ready.
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If there is one thing that I have learned from childhood, it’s that this question never gets a cheery answer, but why would it? After spending all morning picking up after all of the filth that everyone else managed to miss for the past three months, fist fighting the other moms who also made the fatal mistake of last minute grocery shopping and cooking 10 different, high maintenance dishes at once, the last thing any sane human being wants is to have a child breathing down their neck. You’ll get your food – it’s just in the best interest of everyone involved not to speak of it until then. Pretend there’s no food. There’s never been any food.
2. Hide in your room until all the work is done.
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Still in bed, pretending you haven’t heard mom banging around everything within arms reach in the kitchen, you decide maybe it’s about that time in the afternoon to start getting ready. By the time you finish your obnoxiously long shower, experiment with 50 different makeup looks and go through enough wardrobe changes to put any celebrity to shame, you casually stroll out of your room just in time to not be of any assistance at all. This makes for a very angry mother. If there is one thing you don’t want on Thanksgiving, it’s an angry mother. You never want an angry mother. You don’t actually have to do anything useful, but you could at least drag the broom aimlessly across the house or carry a rag around with a look of determination on your face.
3. Slip into a food coma, leaving her with enough dishes to serve a small army.
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“Wow, that was great. Oh look – the couch. Who put that there? I think I’m going to lie down for a while; I’m so tired. Mom, did you know that turkey makes you tired?” Yes, mother knows. Mother also knows how the dishwasher is only so big and is now left to assess a week’s worth of damage done in about one hour. It takes a special kind of person to actually enjoy scrubbing the dirty remains off of other people’s plates, and I know you just want to lay back and appreciate that beautiful food baby that you’re going to regret as soon as you get back to school. But if you take one for the team, you won’t be sorry. Save yourself the guilt and passive aggression and grab a plate or two… or 10.
4. Offer to help cook and then screw it up.
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So you got a little bit too excited with the cinnamon in that candied yam dish and have now inflicted the cinnamon challenge upon your unsuspecting family, but at least you tried, right? Wrong. Sometimes just trying isn’t enough, and the family has been anxiously awaiting this meal ever since they polished off the leftovers from last year’s Thanksgiving. The stakes are high, so this is no time for you to sabotage your mother’s good name for the sake of experimentation. Sometimes mommy doesn’t want her little helper unless she is sure that she won’t end up poisoning the family. If you are willing and able to give this pumpkin pie your all, go for it, but proceed with caution. Your family is depending on you (and so is your mother) who will remember this dinner forever if you screw it up.
5. Forget to say thank you on Thanksgiving of all days.
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For anyone who was raised in a house in which “please” and “thank you” became second nature, to somehow forget the magic words on such an occasion is detrimental. I’ve backed into furniture and uttered a polite apology, and yet I’m sure there was a time or two where I made this mistake. You could do everything else right – help clean, cook, even grocery shop with mom – but if you don’t utter these words by the time the last person gets up from the table, a storm is brewing. It’s easy to forget that the food didn’t just miraculously drop from the sky, and that hours of blood, sweat and tears went into those mashed potatoes (that’s why they’re so salty.) But regardless of whether you reluctantly gagged down every bite or you went in for seconds or thirds, it’s best to just give thanks.