During Thanksgiving, sophmore year 1996, Eddie, Allen, Winnie, and myself decided to stay in Boston. Actually, more accurately, we were going to join my family in Killington for a 3 day ski trip. I think it was our first "road trip" together. This in itself made everything seem more exciting. However, before the 3+ hour drive to Killington, we had all agreed to have Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment in Boston. We bought a fat turkey from Star Market on Comm Ave the day before. The thing was completely frozen, and, as with most people cooking a turkey for the first time, we'd figured a few hours prior to baking would be enough to thaw the damn bird. So, that Thursday, sometime late afternoon, we began prepping all the other food and thawing the turkey. We didn't want to leave too late, since we still had a fairly long drive ahead of us. Eddie and I were doing most of the cooking and we soon realized that a few hours was simply not enough time to thaw an entire turkey. I remember Eddie looking at me looking at him with that "oh shit, what now" expression. we were like "man, we don't have time for this, we gotta figure something out" And I can't remember who's idea it was, but in the end we decided to run the turkey through some cold water. To our mutual astonishment, this did nothing to thaw the bird and in no time, we were bathing it under hot water trying to get the thing to thaw. After some time, we felt the bird was ready to bake and we shoved it into the oven at 350 degrees f or so. In the meantime, we just sat around getting ready to leave and waiting for the turkey. When we finally took it out, it looked like the most beautiful thing to us. The skin was a crisp golden brown and there was a mutual satisfaction amongst us all on a job well done. With our carving knife, we pierced the crisp skin and carved about an inch into the turkey before hitting something hard. Figuring it for a bone our something we tried again with the same result. carving away the top inch, we realized that what lay underneath was nothing less than a brick of ice. This was it, we could do no more, and in the end we ended up just eating the surface of the turkey.
I remember sharing this story with Eddie many times as the years past. I think something about it will always shine in my heart because it defined so many of our future adventures together into the unknown. We had so much fun that day, I doubt there's another thanksgiving I remember so clearly. Eddie had this great sense of humor about him and no matter what we were doing, we were doing it laughing whole heartedly all the way. He had such a wonderfully quirky humor which I miss so much.