It's Thanksgiving, folks.

Today, my life was a Mr. Bean gag reel.

After an unproductive morning, I got it into my head to donate blood. I posted a Facebook status to encourage everyone to do the same, and I hopped into my car. Fifteen minutes later, I realized I was on the wrong street, and I’d overshot directly into the heart of Mountain View traffic. Ten minutes, a u-turn, and just fifty feet later, I got stuck in a right turn lane.

Which funneled me into a grocery store parking lot. At 2:30 p.m. The day before Thanksgiving.

And when I got to the blood center, I found out that I’d left my photo I.D. at home; not only did that mean I couldn’t give blood, but I was driving without a license, and I passed a cop on my way out of the parking lot.

Thankfully, the cop wasn’t psychic, but the mission was a horrible failure.

I’d like to take a moment to give thanks that my vicious cycle is a comedy, and that my definition of a horrible failure is that blood stays inside my body.

And now for something completely different.

I got the urge to write a poem, so here it is. I’ll probably describe the thought process behind it some other time, because I feel like explaining it now would ruin it.

Quick note: “field” is one syllable.

They March

I sit at the window and watch them march past

Their ranks and their columns in field gray and black.

They scorn the mundane as potential denied:

Betrayal of passion, it's Man gentrified;

A man without struggle’s awash in the tide,

So join in the cause — my brother, decide.

We called them salvation and begged them for more;

Who gave them the right? We opened the door.

Our brothers in arms would have hero’s reward;

What blinded our sight? Our honor restored.

I sit by the window and force myself back

From cheering their columns in field gray and black.