HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

Leah Dieterich’s book “thxthxthx” and website of the same title encourages giving thanks for all things in life (even tote bags) in the form of little scribbled thank-you notes. It’s just more evidence of how much a shift in perspective can change your whole mood and how you see your surroundings. In Lebanon, we tend to focus on the negative because, let’s face it: there’s a lot. However, in the spirit of Thanksgiving that falls on the same day as Independence Day, here are 10 Lebanese things that we should be thankful for:

1. Second Set of Parents

With some time, your close friends’ mothers with eventually adopt you. They will overfeed you, tell you to borrow a jacket when you forget yours at home, and lecture you when you get your first tattoo. They will say things like “yiii shu mahdoumeh/taybeh/jou3aneh” and ask about all your family members because they have now become a part of your family too. And in your silly attempt to win over Mommy #2 because you want her to think you’re an angel and a very good influence in general, you will playfully tease your friend (her child) on their shortcomings and laugh together in slow-motion while “A Wonderful World” plays in the background. Your friend takes no offense because they know you’re putting on a show and they’ll return the favor next time YOUR mom makes peach cobbler.

2. Nosy Families

Your great aunt wants to know why you’re applying to jobs overseas and your uncle doesn’t understand your logic when it comes to your personal life or why you refuse to tell him about it at all. Your teta is in a class of her own. This lil’ old lady will cook you a whole tray of kibbeh bil forn just to lure you over to her house because you’ve been so “busy”…going to the Alleyway in Hamra. She will ask you what you’re doing at university now, when you finish, and when you plan on making babies with a good catch from the village. There are only two majors: medicine or engineering. To Teta, if you studied anything in the sciences, you’re becoming a doctor. If you studied anything in design or architecture, you’re an engineer. All other majors mean that you are expected to start your own business. Regardless of what you’ve studied, a wedding should happen before you’re 30 or this woman is going to set you up with your cousin. Don’t get mad, she just wants to see you happy. And pregnant.

3. Parking Lot Attendants

These guys can be jerks but sometimes you get the super cheerful ones who think up new ways to say “Good Morning” to you everyday. That, or they compliment you in Egyptian dialect that you hardly understand so you just smile and walk away. Ten minutes later, you realize that when you thought he was talking about your green eyeliner, he was actually saying a navy blue car left a scratch on your fender while backing out the night before. Shit. You have to be nice to these guys because you will end up needing to park there again at some point in your life and you don’t want there to be bad blood between you. Even if they probably played Rush Hour as a kid and can arrange the lot like a labyrinth from hell, swallow your pride and just be honest when they ask you what time you’re leaving. They’re protecting your car from the evil meter maids and valets that sweat all over your armrest.

4. Host at Traditional Lebanese Joints

These guys all have mafioso names in my head. Typically, they’re on the plump side and wear suits and manrings; they look like they retired from the Gambinos and now run a respectable place dedicated to serving food to the familia. They’ll fit you in if you’re regulars and treat your dad (or whoever the alpha male of the table is) like he’s the Boss. Best part about these restaurants: puffy pita bread, the fresh bread you get that’s inflated like a balloon and crispy right in the center. Perfect for scooping hummus or soaking up the tabbouli sauce because you left it on the wrong part of your plate. You get a whole endless basket-full too.

5. Electricity Cuts

When the electricity cuts, you are dependent on generators, UPSes, or the battery life of your electronics. Since we’re skilled long-distancers, you end up chatting in a group convo with people all over the world and a game develops in the midst of a weird conversation. A current favorite is “Indie Rock Band Track Titles” which started off with one friend suggesting a bunch of music that sounded like made-up songs but were real. The replies to her suggestions were invented titles for bands and tracks which developed into a cycle of useless creativity culminating in a full soundtrack along with album cover art (photographs of items near us that inspired titles).

Examples:
Chrome Frog Teapot – Avalanche of My Desire, Tabasco – Barrons Spanish ft Juicy Fruit, Suits and Sex – Cameroon Elephants

Your batteries run out and then you have to spend time with REAL people. If we didn’t have electricity cuts, we would remain in our technological bubbles instead of spending time sitting around the kitchen table with your sisters staring at the walls and discussing why pumpkins are orange.

6. Slow Internet

Even with 3G and DSL, our internet is still unreliable in comparison to the outside world. This is a blessing because if our download rate was actually acceptable, we’d be streaming every episode of every series 24/7 and downloading every album since 1920 onwards because piracy doesn’t exist. But, you know, we’re being productive on the side. If we already do this now, what would happen if YouTube videos actually played when you press play? How much work do you think you’d get done if “buffering/loading” never appeared on your screen? Unless you’re paid to do this, and thus have an amazing job and I want to be your friend, you will get nothing done ever.

7. No Piracy Laws

Or if there are any, they aren’t enforced (like most laws here) so we get to benefit from a ton of free music and dirt-cheap DVDs of movies that aren’t even released in the theaters (because they take an extra month to get cleared or are banned). We get angry when we have to pay over $3 for a film that was released last month just because it wasn’t available at the other place. It’s even worse when you get home and find that it’s dubbed in Spanish and there are no subtitles or it’s one of those I-just-saw-a-guy-get-up-in-the-chair-in-front-of-me-and-I’m-not-at-the-movies copies. As for music, the CD section in Virgin Megastore should just be transformed into a skeet shooting range (yes, I can’t believe they’re called that too) because I don’t think I’ve bought one in the past 8 years.

8. Emigration

The majority of the people you grew up with now live abroad or are planning on leaving within the next year. Reasons vary from higher learning to job opportunities to I-just-need-to-get-out-of-my-parent’s-house. It takes some time to get used to the country being an airport terminal at all times of the year, especially the last two weeks of December and the extended June-September window. However, you get to have friends all over the world so you have plenty of no-hotel-options when you want to travel for a break and there’s always someone awake to keep you company when you can’t sleep. Plus, you get to online shop and use their addresses for shipping. SCORE.

9. Professional Compensation

The salaries here make it harder for young people to be able to stand on their own. If they were to move out, they would have to pay for rent, utilities, and the meals they swipe from the fridge. Is it possible to do on a Lebanese salary? yes. Is it done? rarely. Besides the social stigma that accompanies young adults living on their own before marriage, it doesn’t make much sense to move into your own place and pay rent if your parent’s house is two blocks away and you can live there for free. However, this gives you the ability to save some of the cash you’re making since you’re not paying for EVERYTHING. Eventually, you should be able to live on your own especially if you can afford to throw away cash on booze, shoes or Black Ops. No excuses. We should be thankful for shit pay because it teaches you what you really should spend your hard earned cash on. And it’s not a pair of $800 peep-toes.

10 . No Metro

Actually no, this just sucks.

But mostly, we should be thankful for our schizophrenic patriotism.

We love Lebanon. We hate Lebanon. We complain about all its imperfections daily but preach about its awesomeness to foreigners. We tease each other for speaking different languages in one sentence, yet it’s a blessing to know more than one language to begin with. Our country is in debt, our infrastructure is always under construction, and our employable youth is our best export but it’s home. Our country isn’t special because of Jeita or Phoenician roots, it’s special because of its people regardless of who they are or what they believe in.

Since the duration of Autumn in Lebanon is a weekend, it seems that winter decided to officially roll in as of last Monday. This is confirmed by the 3 common signs: your house has rugs again, your winter clothes have reappeared, and you’re having (maybe) non-sexual wet dreams of a jacuzzi filled with non-sticky hot chocolate and mini marshmallows.

And so 10 Reasons You Secretly… – The Winter Edition

1. Waking Up in the Morning

You’re all wrapped up under heavy blankets. It’s warm. It’s safe. It’s all yours and you’re never going to leave this feather fort of cotton. What’s that, body? You need to pee? No, you don’t. What’s that alarm? Time to get up? No, it’s not. And not to use profanity but, in the words of Babe, BAH RAM YOU ALARM. Snoozing is the reason you have set 4 consecutive alarms with different tones. You know what awaits you: you have to get out of your cocoon and then get undressed to change into whatever layers are going to return you to the warmth that you currently have, the same one that took all night to create. The dog is barking, the duck is quacking, and then there’s the nuclear holocaust alert that is your phone’s way of saying “THE SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN, MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!”

Uhm, how ’bout no. Snooze.

2. Hot Water Dependency

You would rather go a week without a shower than take an ice cold one (okay, you’ll go to Teta’s before that happens…I hope) but the dependency on hot water that develops during winter is always surprising. You’re late for work and the hot water heater was off all night. Shower? No. Okay, fine, shower. Short-haired folk, you win on this one. You don’t have a layer of drippy icicles attached to your scalp once this is over. Are you hiding in your bed wrapped in your mom’s fluffy robe wishing you were home-schooled/freelanced/never had to morning-shower ever again? Skip the shower you say? You still have to wash your face with the liquid cousin of an unlicensed acupuncturist. And then your hands are never warm ever again.

3. Darker Earlier

Normally you’re not afraid to walk to your car after a late afternoon at work but then again, no one told you to park in the underground-flickering-light-leaky-pipe-horror-scene-you’re-all-going-to-die-down-here-umbrella-corporation parking lot. So now that it gets dark at 5 p.m., you’re running like the Matrix phone is ringing. It’s okay though, there’s a security guard who looks like a sweet old grandpa, kind of like the man who used to sell you 500L.L. bags of Fantasia chips in the village when you’d go on walks to the mini market because you were bored. He’d give you free chocolate when you were short on change because he knew you’d be back once you get another Eidiyyeh from your old-school-Marlboro-reds-only uncle or when you got bored again…so 30 minutes tops. 3amo Security even has the same tooth missing under his bushy mustache…maybe he’ll give you a free “lo7 chocola”, too. TANK, I’M IN. *hand on car window*

4. Michelin Man

“Oh, winter wardrobes are so elegant”/”Don’t you love layers”/”Leather jackets are so badass.” Yes, you all look rather dashing and sophisticated in your coats, shalls, and tights with little bows on them. Everyone loves a cashmere sweater. Especially if you’re not the one wearing it and you’re hugging a cashmered entity. Sawwwwft. You momentarily turn into a cat as you nuzzle the sweater before realizing it’s attached to a person. “Sorry, I was just testing to see if you had an irregular arrythmia, it’s quite common, just looking out BRO.” If the sweater’s fresh from the laundromat, try your best not to breathe in all the softness…loudly. Anyway, because you are a hot tamale of cloth, you tend to be rounder than your actual self.  Welcome to the Michelin Man Army. This is completely normal so if for some reason the answer to “does this ski jacket make me look fat?” is a “no”, then you should eat a double cheeseburger wrapped in bacon because even Popeye’s Olive becomes a beehive in those things.

5. Driving Lectures

Because it’s raining, people don’t know how to drive. In a country where people don’t know how to drive to begin with, this can mean very scary things to worried family members, especially parents. Rain is suddenly the perfect reason not to go anywhere…even if it rained 4 days ago. You see, roads don’t dry until March so you might as well just stay home. “Invite your friends over, where are you guys going to go in this?” Of course, this doesn’t work because your friends parents are saying the same thing to them so everyone’s just inviting each other over and you’re caught in the Snowball of Parental Worry. Don’t even try the I’m-driving-to-Faraya card. But, honestly, don’t even try driving there because them bitches be crazy.

6. Uggly Shoes

Uggs galore. Studded boots. BoyzIIMen Timberlands everywhere. Burberry patterned boots – there’s always a pair of those around. These huge shoes are your only hope against keeping your feet (and sometimes your entire calves and knees) dry. If you get the really heavy duty kind, you may enjoy charging through puddles way too much pretending your Godzilla and then acting out the scene with the lighter. Winter footwear gives off the illusion that we have tree stumps for feet. We are all Hobbitses.

7. Wet Socks

HOW this happens baffles me. Could it be because you decided to live dangerously (props if you read that in Austin Powers’ voice) and wore your Converse instead? Could it be that your boots are not waterproof and you should’ve got those kind that make you look like you sacrificed a family of rubber ducks to make them? Whatever it is, you end up with wet socks. These go right up there with the roads that don’t dry until March. The only solution is to leave them on a chauffage while you and your friend watch all four seasons of the OC. Okay, skip season 4.

8. Cold Nose

It is known that the extremities are usually the parts of the body that are always the coldest. For me, it’s the nose that’s the coldest. Can’t they invent an invisible wool clown-nose? Or something you can just slip on to keep it toasty? Stop thinking about a willy warmer.

It’s even worse when you get a cold and you develop a love-hate relationship with the tissue box. Personally, I become Rudolph reincarnated in human form and no, I don’t have a thing for naming myself after male deer.

9. New Year’s Eve Obsession

The discussions as to where you will be spending NYE begin. You round up the lists of people who will be in the country, people you actually want to spend it with, people you want to avoid, and people you have to invite because they’re part of a package deal – a get one, buy 5 free sort of posse. Then comes the part where you have to figure out if these people want to actually fork over cash, go thrifty, or use the “I’m so over it, I’m staying home” excuse because this will determine whether you need tickets to a party, keys to a house/chalet, or just enough pesos for a bottle of Jack and a copy of Snatch. Don’t stress, the NYE plan will change 8 times before December 31st.

10. End of the Year/World

You hate the beginning of winter because it means another year is ending and you don’t know when that happened because last time you checked it was still February so it shouldn’t be winter AGAIN if it’s still winter but it’s November and another year has passed and you haven’t done everything you said you were going to do and you’re aging and your life isn’t going the way you thought it would and things were SO different last November but different is good because it helps you grow and there’s time to be something and achieve greatness and we’re all going to die in December.