Each November. I compose a “Thanksgiving Thankful List” for the preceding year. My wife, Deb, and I enjoy our life in red rock southern Utah and have many things for which we are thankful. I hope sharing them brings a smile and acknowledgement that even the seldom thought of can be a source of thankfulness. Below is my 2020 list.

1. I’m thankful for yardsticks. In this era of social distancing, knowing how far six feet is can be useful. Here’s what you do. Take three yard sticks and place two of them end to end with the third one on top. Make sure the ends of the one on top line up at the 1 ½ feet (18 inches) mark on the bottom two sticks. Wrap some strong tape around all three sticks at several places. You now have a solid six foot measuring stick to keep away those unwanted germ infested humans.
2. I’m grateful for gloves. Consider: You have completed the perfect crime—trace evidence vacuumed up, footprints rubbed out, and your gloves preclude pesky fingerprints being left behind.
Wait, wait, I didn’t mean to say that. What I meant was gloves are good because they protect your hands when pruning rosebushes or while digging a trench for a new irrigation line in your backyard. Forget that crime stuff.
3. I value the flexibility of the English language. (The people who study such things estimate the number of words in the English language from about 175,000 in current usage to more than a million that have ever been used.) I enjoy employing perfectly fine words that are not much used in common speech/writing. Words such as doohickey, penultimate, and clowder. Can they be used in one sentence? Sure. “Use the doohickey to move that clowder to the penultimate room.” Or in common speak, “Use that gadget to move that large group of cats to the second to last room.”
4. I appreciate long lines at supermarket checkouts, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and so on. I know most normal people consider long, slow lines the bane of humanity. However, unlike most people I enjoy telling jokes to strangers. Long lines give me a chance to turn to a fellow line-mate and tell them a joke or two. Nothing beats getting a smile, or even laugh, from a complete stranger.
How about a couple of one-liners suitable for in-line strangers? Did you know that prior to the invention of crowbars, crows had to do all their drinking at home?
Which dinosaur had an extensive vocabulary? The Thesaurus.
5. I’m glad electrons exist. Without the little buggers, electricity would not exist. Without electricity we would not have luminescent lightbulbs to drive away the night, no computers, no Tesla cars, no stoplights, no electric motors of any kind. Those are all good, but mostly without electricity, my misspent youth playing pinball machines would not have happened. Put the silver sphere in play, work the flippers, rack up the points—adolescent nirvana.
6. I’m thankful for our cats, Bob and Willa. Cats have many traits to appreciate, but one stands out—their ability to show affection. What? There is a popular misconception that cats are aloof and not very affectionate. If you gain a cat’s trust—don’t yell at them, be kind to them, play with them, quit petting them when they have had enough, and so on—you will have a friend for life. They will look at you and give a slow eye blink. Or do a soft head butt on your head. Or the classic winding through your legs and rubbing against you. All are signs of trust and affection.
7. I’m thankful for George Orwell’s masterful dystopian novel 1984. Published in 1949, this amazing book clearly shows the deleterious effects of a large out-of-control central government and extreme cancel culture. While Orwell entertains with a great story, he also warns about letting too many individual rights slip away. I’m not thankful that so many politicians and political activists act as though 1984 was a guide book to imposing tyranny and not as a warning.

I hope everyone recalls the many things, obvious and not so obvious, to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.