For the past three years, The Duchess and I have celebrated Thanksgiving by arising (very) early to fly from Chapel Hill, NC to Kansas City, MO to spend the holiday weekend with our buddies, Neil & Irene Ellis,1 and their family.
Then, Covid-19 happened.
So, for 2020, we sent, as shown atop this post, stand-ins.
The photo below depicts their arrival. It should be noted that packing was atypically easy, especially since Neil & Irene supplied our surrogates with outerwear to combat the KC chill.
It turns out, these characters do have advantages:
- They are great listeners
- They don’t tell the same old medical school stories for the 4027th time, thus coercing counterfeit appreciation
- They can safely eschew masks & social distancing
- They are easy on the victuals budget
- They don’t provoke altercations over politics, sports, social and generational mores, conspiracies…
As our stand-ins would declare — if they could — have a great and safe Thanksgiving.
Update: Thanksgiving 2020 – The Year Of The Stand-ins: Dinner
___________________
- Neil is great friend who plays a respectable round of golf, identifies unseen birds by their calls, completes the New York Times Friday Crossword in ink, and snaps a heck of a photo. His photos are featured here at AllanShowalter.com and can be found at Neil Ellis Photos. Irene, shown below,
is a gem, who has remained enamored of Neil and become a blessing to friends like us. [↩]
Neil’s beard/goatee game is STRONG.
Indeed
Very creative, and great fun! I must say that the dog seems a bit bewildered… Happy Thanksgiving to all!
What a great and creative idea. Where and how did you get these stand-ins made?
I’d love to do this for the family I can’t see this Christmas.
Thanks for the thumbs up. I’ll track down the vendor, and send the address your way.