Happy Thanksgiving, everyone in the U.S! Since it’s Thanksgiving, I have decided to delay my normal flash fiction post and instead, post about my Thanksgiving. Just a warning – this is not my last Thanksgiving post and oh, you can read about my Thanksgiving posts from last year down below in *related posts*.

My Thanksgiving actually began a week early this year when I spent an afternoon volunteering at the Youth Impact Center. It is a place for kids to go after school, a place where kids can do their homework, learn, play, and stay out of trouble. It is a good place.

Every year, about one week before Thanksgiving, the accounting club at my school, Beta Alpha Psi – which I’m a part of, would go down there and provide a Thanksgiving meal for those kids and their families. The picture below is only half of the room. You can imagine just how many families we served that night – I believe it was over 500 people.

It was my second time volunteering and I was quite productive this time. I stayed until the end and not because I wanted the service hour but because I wanted to. I felt like after so many people had helped me over the years, the least I could do was to give back a little here and there.

I helped with the preparation of the food and I socialized with my classmates. For the duration of the evening, I stayed behind the kitchen counter, announcing to the boys when there’s an opening in the warmer so they could remove the trays of steamy food from the oven and carry it to the warmer. During all of that, I watched the festivities in the dining room, as people lined up with a foam tray full of mashed potatoes with gravy, turkey, stuffing, corn, and a roll. I smiled at them as they walked passed.

At the end of the night, after families had eaten and gone home, it was our turn to the food. By that time, we had already run out of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pie but no matter, there were plenty of turkey, corn, stuffing, and gravy. I helped myself to a small tray of turkey, gravy, corn, and a roll. The turkey was delicious and one of the best I’ve had but it suspiciously tasted like deli meat. I told my friend about my suspicion. She chuckled and replied, “It probably is.”