Moor or less: It’s great to be a guy (and other titles) on Thanksgiving

“It must be great being a man during Thanksgiving,” my wife grumbled while preparing The Big Meal.

Well,  yes, it is, I mouthed to myself. It’s one of those 4-F holidays for me — food, family, football and … well, you can probably figure out the fourth with all that food processing down through my innards.

But that darn World Cup that some of the younger members in our family have embraced has started competing with our American football for TV time in our living room.

I walked out of the room during a timeout in the Lions-Bills game and I came back only to see Brazil and Serbia dinking their round ball down the field. Oh, well. I guess it could have been Uruguay and South Korea in their 0-0 spellbinder.

I do have to admit, though, that the World Cup can be a pretty good tune-up on geography, even for old an f-f-f-fogie like me.

But back to my wife’s comment. Yes, to paraphrase baseball great Reggie Jackson — a bit of a turkey himself — she is the straw that stirs the drink during this holiday (any holiday, really). And she could probably use a stiff drink when all is said and done.

She uttered  her “must be great being a man during Thanksgiving” when our 19-year-old granddaughter and my 95-year-old mother were helping her in the kitchen the day before The Big Meal.

“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” I said from a safe distance away.

Seriously, I wasn’t going to venture into that scrum. My wife has never met a pan, dish or utensil she didn’t like to dirty during her prep work and my mom, all 105 pounds of her, can somehow block up the routes to the sink and stove better than a lot of defensive backs.

And my granddaughter? She’s a hard-core vegetarian and I’m almost scared to sample whatever concoction she happens to be whipping up.

I did hang around, though, at least within earshot (which I admit isn’t all that far these days) of my wife’s requests. There is the turkey’s cavity to clean (always my job), jars to open and last-minute trips to the grocery to make.

In fact, I made four trips in three days — two of them back-to-back. I was halfway home from the store when I got my wife’s call Wednesday morning telling me that my mom needed a few more apples for her cranberry salad.

Back I went. Because I had been through the same cashier’s line a couple of times during the previous 24 hours, I made sure I picked another. I didn’t want my favorite cashier to start thinking that I am sweet on her.

Yeah, it’s good to be a guy during Thanksgiving, but I would say that a lot of us do earn our keep in one way or another.

It’s also good to be a dad, a husband, a son, an uncle, a brother and a papa while looking around the table before The Big Meal. That’s the best thing about Thanksgiving. It comes around once a year and reminds me of all those wonderful titles.

Now back to the couch. Go Irish, go Bears, go USA and why not Senegal, too.