There's something about human nature. When mankind was first designed, the programmers decided to add a switch that couldn't be deactivated, and buried it deep in the minds of every woman ever born.

I am referring, of course, to the seemingly inevitable desire to cook a Thanksgiving dinner.

Having recently purchased a house, Alex and I were looking forward to spending our Thanksgiving in some remote location -- like, say, McDonald's -- and waking the next morning to a holiday and a clean kitchen. But, as they say, the best lain plans of mice and men...

It looked good on paper, all right?

The itch started out small. "Maybe I should bake a pie." The thought would lurk in the corner until I wasn't paying attention, and then it would attack, flinging itself out of the darkness -- "maybe I should bake a pie." Having never baked a pie before, I regarded this concept as proof of temporary insanity. No amount of dismissal, however, would chase the idea away. "Maybe I should bake a pie." Fine. I would bake a pie. But what was required for baking a pie? Research. I dug out the only cookbook in the house (a battered copy of Cooking With Steam) and discovered that it was about as useful as asking my big brother for advice on sex: while the book didn't turn red and stammer, it also didn't teach me how to bake a pie. (But it did provide me with a really neat method for making Gooey Green Yuck That Sticks To Anything. We'll deal with that next week.)

All right, then, I would research in other directions. A few hours of poking around on the Internet garnered nothing but an assortment of instructions on constructing explosive devices and several offers of electronic sex (which will be explored at more depth in a later column). Entertaining, but not very instructive in the secret ways of pie-baking. In my own inimitable way, I had assumed that I could stumble across a secret race of pie-bakers, posting their ambrosia-like recipes to a secure (but open to willing acolytes) web site.

In a word, NOT!

Finally, reaching a state of true desperation, I did something that no sane person would have done. I called my grandmother.

My family is large. And Irish. A large, Irish family. Which means that anyone over the age of forty (or, in some extreme cases, such as my Aunt Jennifer, twenty-five) feels that they have the right to critique your life from every possible angle the instant you give them something which might be considered an opening. Now, what does having your first-time homeowner, professed lesbian, living-in-sin with-a-man-twice-her-age granddaughter call you for baking tips constitute?

That's right. An opening. One of these days, I'll learn better.

Somewhere in the dizzying spin that is a conversation with my grandmother (why aren't you married yet? Oh, I forgot, you're -- *sniff* -- not a heterosexual. Of course. That makes you special) regarding myself (silly young thing), my family (a collection of fools and drunkards, but we love them, see, that's what makes us better), and my employment prospects (this work thing is nice, dearie, but you should be raising children), I managed to squeeze the all-important knowledge out of her: how to bake a pie.

Apparently, it mostly involves sacrificing apples, throwing a lot of cinnamon around (which must have made it much more expensive in the days before the Armenian Corner Grocery) and shouting "Don't touch that, I'm cooking!" Unfortunately, the conversation also had less desirable side effects. By the time it was over, I not only knew how to make a pie, but that I was expected to cook Thanksgiving dinner. For six people, plus Alex and myself. Ho boy.

(As a side note, the only real downside I can see to my not intending to have children is that I will never get to be a McGuire family grandmother. Judging by the ones I've known, it must be an awful lot of fun.)

Besides the obvious difficulty of trying to prepare dinner for eight when I'd just moved into a new house and still couldn't find the forks, there was another, less glaring complication: I'm about as domestic as your average lemur. I can, without putting out any obvious degree of effort, burn water. Anything more complicated than toast flees my approach -- and yes, we're talking about inanimate materials getting up and running away -- for the fear of what I might do.

Would you really want to eat a Thanksgiving dinner which I had prepared? Without having some sort of major medical plan pre-paid, and peace made with the deity of your choice before you entered the dining room? Thought not.

But once sworn, twice bound -- we are, after all, a large Irish family, and I'd never live down the ignominy of failing to prepare a dinner which my grandmother had promised of me (now you see the real reason that the Irish never took over the world: our grandmothers promised everyone that we'd make dinner, and we were too busy cooking for an mass conquest). It looked like I was going to have to learn to cook. Very well, and very quickly.

My task was made easier by the fact that some of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes are so simple that even a cat could prepare them (a statement which Nyssa went to some lengths to prove, whipping up a mouse-and-walnut pie which put my feeble culinary attempts to shame). Mashed potatoes? No problem. Gravy? There's nothing in my religious code against using instant, thank you.

The turkey proved to be a bit more of a concern. Say what you like about the barbaric traditions of Thanksgiving and the symbology of roasting the bird that was almost our nation's symbol -- that thing is big! It's Birdzilla, destroyer of cities, consumer of small nations! And people just hand it to whomever is preparing Thanksgiving dinner, expecting it to be miraculously done in time for everyone who didn't cook to stuff their faces!

It's a wonder that there has been a revolution already, made up entirely of the granddaughters of large, Irish families, rising up against the Tyranny of Turkey.

Of course, the house didn't burn down.

And the turkey did taste pretty good.

And it was awfully nice to finally be the one with the ladle -- until that moment when I smacked Alex for sticking his fingers into the pie dough, I hadn't realized what primal joy came from hitting people with cooking implements. And anyway, I've agreed to do it again next year -- with a little more time to plan, I may even be able to do crystallized yams.

Pardon me; I think something's burning.

Where's the lightswitch in this thing?

Seanan McGuire. 11/30/98

'A Phouka Walks Into A Bar' is a non-commercial humour column. If you feel that you have been added to this list in error, or know someone that you would like to have added to this list, please e-mail Seanan McGuire at delirium@xocolatl.com. The contents of this column are (c) Seanan McGuire, 1998, and may not be forwarded or distributed without this notice. This is not a test. The little mushroom clouds are hallucinations. Go back to bed.