Your Mountain Times staff is thankful for many things: family, friends, Tito Puente. As many Americans begin to salivate over their respective turkeys, tofurkeys and spamurkeys, it’s important to remember the true meaning of Thanksgiving: kneeling in prayer and thanking our maker for arriving in the New World after a hellish journey across thousands of sea miles.

Transatlantic journeys aside, it’s oftentimes the little things that elude our appreciation. Other times, it’s the big things we’re just too gosh-darned busy to notice. Sometimes, it’s both, and sometimes, it’s kittens. After all, they’re fuzzy and playful. Here are some things for which we’re thankful.

Caroline Monday: My Garbage Disposal

1. Basin 2. Can’t find it 3. Cylinder thing 4. Plug 5. No idea 6. Other thing 7. Box thing 8. Hose thing

It is amazingly easy to get bogged down with life. To let little things bring you down and make you forget that there are equally as many little things that are great as there are that are bad.

I mean, there are some big things that deserve our thanks, like the polio vaccine and several great works of art and literature. But those things are easy to be thankful for. I appreciate my friends and family nearly every single day, but it is harder to stop for a moment and think of those little things in life that we take for granted.

I could list hundreds of examples of the little things in my life that warrant such thanks. However, I’m sure you don’t have time for that, as the holiday season tends to be hectic for just about everyone. So, I’ll write on just one: my garbage disposal.

This modern miracle ranks right up there with nonstick cookware and remote keyless entry, in my book. Not all homes have garbage disposals, just as not all cars have remote keyless entry and not all pans are coated with Teflon. My current home does have one, and I love it.

I try to minimize the amount of waste I produce, motivated by the fact that I have to haul my own garbage more than any genuine concern for the environment (I am concerned, but I’m also a bit lazy). Thus, I visit the Foscoe Container Site maybe every other week.

Two weeks is plenty of time for a bag of garbage to get good and smelly, enticing raccoons to pry open my outdoor trash can and scatter its contents all over my porch. Here’s where the garbage disposal comes in. Rather than scrape scraps into the garbage, I can simply rinse them down the drain. No smelly garbage can. No clever raccoons (not that I have anything more against raccoons than I would have against any animal who spills trash everywhere). No risk of the bag busting and dropping its gooey contents all over my feet as I try to lift it into a Dumpster.

It took me several years of living without a garbage disposal to come to appreciate the one that I have, but it will be a long time before I take it for granted again.

Frank Ruggiero: Drivers Who Let People Turn Left

Turning left shouldn’t be this difficult.

It must be carelessness. Either that or busy-ness (not to be confused with business). You’re on a two-way street and you have to turn left. Traffic begins backing up at a stoplight in the other direction, and your window of opportunity is rapidly closing. The cars aren’t going anywhere, for the red light is stern and oppressive. A car comes to a halt and blocks the street on which you hoped to turn, while traffic behind you begins to pile up like oiled hamburger patties on an asphalt bun. From there, the offending driver stares obliviously ahead or avoids making eye contact.

It’s an all-too-common scenario, and especially in Boone. Boone, however, is a nice town, filled to its ridges with friendly, courteous people, many of whom are kind enough to slow down and let people turn. To these stalwart stewards of streets, it is you for whom I am thankful and willing to write “whom” three times in one paragraph.

Mark Mitchell: The Word “Thankful”

Thankful is a word I use often in my daily life now because I choose it to be. In so many years of my life, “thankful” was a word I truly did not grasp. I was so afraid of what might go wrong, or what I may lose, that I was not equipped to relax and enjoy the blessings that come your way each day. Yes, it was not a healthy way to live because it robbed me of the small joys in life. These joys come in various forms: a kind word; a loving touch; good deeds; the unconditional love of animals; singing off-key to a favorite song; good health and family.

These are the joys that rear their heads everyday, but only if you are looking and not spending your time worrying about the what ifs in life. Today, I’m looking these joys squarely in their face, and that is what I am most certainly thankful for. I hope you are, too. As the old saying goes, “Life is a gift; that’s why it’s called the present.”

Melanie Davis: The Little Things

Blue the dog is hardly a “little thing,” but Melanie is thankful for him, all the same.

When it comes to daily life, I find an innumerable quantity of things to be grateful for, the things that make every day easier and more enjoyable. Something small can put a person in the worst mood for the remainder of a day, so why not reverse that and appreciate the smallest detail to improve the mood.

I attempted to narrow it down to a one or two, but this proved to be too much of a challenge. What to choose – a brownie still warm from the oven with an icy glass of milk or a waiter/waitress that recognizes when my tea is empty? That is a tough call.

Instead I offer a few things that come to mind: a good ink pen that writes smooth and doesn’t burst in my pocket, fresh flowers, knowing the answer to a trivia question, sipping a cup of hot tea, the different sound vinyl has when listening to favorite song, new socks, cooking a four-star dinner for one, hot apple butter, my dog’s reaction when I come home from work, an excessively long scarf of the softest yarn, inside jokes, wearing pajamas while it is still daylight, smiles from strangers, waking up to a fresh snowfall only to run outside and make a snow angel, and the metal barrier on a rotary phone that kept you from dialing past zero.

I think there is a link between optimism and gratitude in life. For Thanksgiving, I offer a favorite quote, though I do not know the author, “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

Jeff Eason – My Left Big Toenail

This year I’m thankful for a lot of things, particularly the opportunity to spend time with my family and friends. I have cousins and in-laws in Florida, Ohio and all over North Carolina and this year I saw just about every one of them.

I’m also thankful that my toenail on my left big toe is growing back. In the spring I dropped a heavy platter and it turned sideways in midair and the edge smashed into the back of my toenail. This dropped me like a sack of potatoes and within minutes the entire toenail turned black. Two days later the toenail came off…I’m not going to describe the carnage that was left underneath.

If you’ve ever wondered how fast a big toenail grows, I’m here to tell you not very quickly. It has been approximately seven months since my old toenail got whacked and the new one is only about halfway up to where it should be. But I’m thankful that I don’t have to go through the rest of my life with a left big toe sans toenail.

(Editor’s Note: In respect for all that is decent and good, there will be no picture of Jeff’s bruised toenail to accompany his MountainTop pick. Instead, here’s a picture of a puppy in a flower pot.)