As Thanksgiving celebrations go, mine has been relatively free of responsibilities. We hosted a small group of grown-ups. Everyone brought food to contribute. For our part, Jim did most of the cooking. I mostly cleared surfaces, assembled serving platters, washed dishes, and poured drinks.

I should have had time to contribute the traditional fish joke item … particularly given that today’s make something prompt was to create something inspired by the world of fish. What an opportunity!

But I was uninspired by the world of fish, I guess.

We can’t recall exactly when or even for certain why, but sometime in the 1980s my family began sneaking some sort of fish item into holiday meals and celebrations. The most memorable was a massive mound of mashed potatoes, sculpted into a detailed replica of a fish, curved around a dish, hugging a roast my mom thought was too small to stand by itself on a large platter. It certainly had presence when paired with that potato sculpture!

Maybe our fish gags jumped the shark with that one. All I could come up with this year was a mustard inscription on a family heirloom plate: