Up for a game of turkey, anyone?

TIME TO BE

thankful. For hearty handshakes. For fourth-quarter rallies. For warm pecan pie.

Think, for a moment, about what went into that nice slice of Thanksgiving pie. First, someone had to buy the pie. To do that, he or she needed a job. For that, the person needed an education and nurturing parents and teachers who cared.

Even with that, he or she needed a break here and a break there to get a decent job -- a lucky moment, an encouraging word from the friend of a friend.

To build a pie, someone had to grow the pecans, nurture them to fruition, harvest them on time. Then someone had to assemble the pie, add the right amount of brown sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon, powder the crust just so.

Sometime today, someone will bake it and pull it out of the oven at the right moment. Someone else will carefully slice the pie, place it on a plate, then bring it to the table -- not forgetting a fork, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream slip-sliding off the still-toasty top.

See, a slice of pie is not a simple thing. A slice of pie is life.

Hey, just think for a moment about what went into that turkey. First, someone had to give us the tradition of turkeys. Ever moved? Ever grumbled for weeks about all the boxes and the packing and the preparation and finding new doctors, new schools, new friends?

Well, imagine loading the Mayflower with everything you owned, then departing for a new frontier, saying goodbye to your old home and friends forever. Now that’s moving. That’s courage. That’s why you’re having turkey today. That’s why you’re undoing that top pants button after the most-memorable feast of the year. A great symbol, turkey. Be sure to save room for pie.

Let’s see, what else is there to be thankful for this day? Oh, yeah, them. The in-laws. The neighbors. The cousins. The friends. You know the drill. Uncle Mort doesn’t like Aunt Sadie. Grandpa Phil can’t stand Jason’s mouthy new wife.

Get over it. For one day, put your petty feuds -- and not-so-petty feuds -- away in a drawer. Try a little tolerance, try to get along. We wail about the conflicts caused by politicians, nation-states, the U.N., but can’t sit side by side with a brooding relative? Today, be a true Pilgrim. Give peace a chance.

One family we know has a little trick they use. Knowing the family tensions that surface in the idle hours before dinner, the Roberts family of suburban Los Angeles has taken to introducing a game. It goes something like this:

First, divide all the Thanksgiving guests into two teams. Each team gets the following items:

* A big garbage bag

* Yellow rubber gloves

* Feathers

* Colored paper

* Pieces of felt

* Safety pins

* Clothespins

* Scissors

* Newspaper

* Masking tape

For the next 20 minutes, the two teams compete to see who can dress one of the team members like -- you guessed it -- a big turkey. It reduces tensions, builds friendship and produces, no doubt, a certain amount of silliness and glee. A precious resource, glee. We should probably spend more time mining it.

In any case, the “Turkey Dressing” game has become a Thanksgiving tradition for the Roberts family, a sort of reality show they stage for themselves. You have to admire their resourcefulness. Their creativity. Their sense of survival. Jan Roberts even recommends it to her parent-ed class.

Maybe it’s not for you, this turkey game. But we might give it a try. Guess who they’ll probably designate as one of the turkeys? Gobble, gobble. When we’re done, one of my teammates will probably try to shoot me.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com, or at myspace.com/chriserskine.