This Thanksgiving Day, I’m humbly grateful.

My mom is still around to dispense laughs and wisdom, and our family’s healthy and happy. We all get along, and when there are differences, we steer conversations around until we find neutral ground.

As is my usual practice in this space, it’s the little things I enjoy and am thankful for. So here goes. I’m thankful for:

Back-up cameras in my car. I’ve never been good at backing up my car. When I was learning to drive, I wanted to practice handling the car while in reverse. The result? I backed into the house and pushed the wall in a few inches.

My brother still teases me.

“It’s not like it wasn’t, oh, let’s see, as big as a house,” Jimmy will say. I’ll throw something at him, and he waits for another opportunity.

Elastic. I remember the days of trying to button pants that were too small. All day, I’d feel like someone was cutting me in half. When they finally put elastic in dress slacks, it was a great day.

I think all pants should have elastic waists, and elastic should be required in all children’s clothes. In fact, elastic would work in almost every garment on the market.

Back scratchers. When I was young, a back scratcher was one of us, standing behind my mom or dad, scratching their backs for what seemed like hours.

My sister, Diane, was the one usually summoned because she has long fingernails and scratches like a pro. The rest of us would wimp out after about 5 minutes.

Now I have a set of bamboo back scratchers and they’re fabulous. At all times, there’s one by my desk, one in my car and one in the living room.

Restaurant drive-through lanes. I remember having to get out of the car, rain, snow, heat, and run inside a restaurant to pick up our burgers and fries. Our parents considered us the door dashers when we were young.

Now, if there’s not a drive through at an eatery, I keep driving until I find one that does not require me to get out of my car.

The service can be slow and sometimes you can’t understand the person on the other end of the speaker. But I’ll take drive-through over finding a parking space, dashing through the parking lot and standing in line every day of the week.

Air fryers. No more warming day-old pizza up in the oven, further drying it out. Now we can reheat pizza, grill hot dogs and bake chicken nuggets in minutes.

There are some things I have mixed feelings about. These are great inventions, but in some instances, they’re annoying and take more time than they’re worth.

Text messaging. Yes, texting is quick and convenient. In some situations, a quick text is the best way to get your message across. But I always mistype a word in the first line and have to go back, letter by letter, and fix it.

Text messaging is also frustrating. Once the text is sent, it’s gone. You can delete the message, but the person on the other end knows you deleted it and will always wonder what you said that needed to be erased from consciousness.

Two-step encryption. This is the extra layer of security where you type in your password. Before you can access your email or a television channel, a code is sent to your phone. You have to type it in and then you can get to your email or a website.

My phone is seldom next to me when I’m at the computer, so I have to go find it before I can log in. It’s bad enough I can’t remember passwords. Now I have to go through a two-step process just to check my email.

I understand the need for security, but it’s an aggravating extra step, especially when I’m in a hurry.

But today’s not a day to quibble about the little annoyances. It’s a day of giving thanks, reflecting on our blessings and enjoying time with the people we choose to surround ourselves with.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.