I'm from Missouri, and we Midwestern women take our Thanksgiving very seriously. Rolls are made from scratch. Dessert shall include no fewer than four different kinds of pie. We will kill you before we let you walk away from the meat case with the best bird. And anyone seen so much as looking at a box of pre-made, dry stuffing is automatically exiled to someplace less Thanksgiving observant - like Guam.

So when our friend "Bob" came bounding up to me sometime in early November and said, "Can I host Thanksgiving this year? Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh?," I had to stifle the urge to snort. It turns out - I didn't know this about myself - that I am a raging sexist pig. I had about as much confidence in a man's ability to cook a proper Thanksgiving dinner as his ability to menstruate. But then he looked at me with this sort of half Orphan Annie/half abused golden retriever expression, and I - unable to withstand such an onslaught - caved.

This is not to say that I didn't still believe this was going to go down in a scene worthy of the Hindenburg. I'm just saying I was willing to stand by and let it happen.

A week later, I sent Bob an e-mail that included a list of some of my Thanksgiving "greatest hits" dishes and suggested that he choose one for me to bring. His reply: "Yes. Please. Thank you. All of them."

This will be referred to as "Warning Sign #1" from here on out.

"Well," my husband said, trying to buck up my spirits. "We can always go to McDonald's afterwards if it goes wrong."

Fortunately, Bob was not alone. Bob was being assisted in his Thanksgiving efforts by "Frank." But because two penises do not a Midwestern woman make, I found this only moderately cheering. At least one could turn the fire extinguisher on the other, I thought, if it came to that.

When we arrived - me having ridden the whole way with my knees up near my chin for all the food in the floorboard - Bob and Frank had laid out appetizers. M&Ms and something that might have been either trail mix or potpourri. That was never really clear. What was clear was that Bob and Frank had gone shopping. In a stunning display of a man's inability to resist a gadget, they had purchased a punch fountain. A light-up punch fountain. A light-up punch fountain that changed colors. Think lava lamp meets wedding reception. Bob was very proud. "The box said it would be the fascinating center of any party!" he told me with that same golden retriever exuberance. I nodded and ate some M&Ms.

With the same enthusiasm I usually reserve for unstopping clogged toilets, I stuck my head into the kitchen, prepared for the worst. Frank was at the counter calmly chopping carrots and expertly checking the turkey's temperature. Martha Stewart would've been proud. Properly chagrined, I left him to it, happy to go back to watching the color-change fountain, which it turns out really is fascinating in a sort of LSD-trip-message-from-Voltar-seizure-inducing way.

Twenty minutes before dinner, I wandered back into the kitchen to begin the last minute prep for my dishes.

Martha Stewart had apparently gone on a bender.

Any good Girl Scout can tell you marshmallows are only slightly less flammable than a well-made Molotov cocktail. Apparently Frank had never been a Girl Scout. If five inches away from the broiler will brown the sweet potato topping, so went his theory, one inch will brown it faster. It will also turn your pan into a working replica of Mount Vesuvius, spewing flaming bits of sticky carbonized sugar at any nearby enemies - or guests.

And while I was fully prepared to throw the punch fountain at it to squelch the flames, it turned out that Bob beating it down with a spoon works just as well.

"Scrape it off," he said helpfully. "Nobody will know."

Sure enough, after a little cosmetic spackling worthy of any beauty pageant, off went the sweet potato carnage to the dinner table, where I showed remarkable restraint by not yelling at the others, "Don't eat that! It's carcinogenic!"

Bob, with sugar burns carefully concealed, took his place at the head of the table. "I think we should all hold hands and say a few words."

On my right, my husband reached out, picked a bit of marshmallow out of my hair and took my hand.



Disclaimer: "Bob" and "Frank" are really lovely men. I like them quite a lot. And despite my revealing this little incident, I'm trusting they'll forgive me.