Grateful Daed

Trawling for Thanksgiving quotes, Bohemian-contributor and Petaluma Argus-Courier community-editor David Templeton emailed a questionnaire to the usual suspects. He topped it with “What are you most thankful for right now?” I have yet to reply because A) I’m on my own damn deadline and B) the question gives me psychic hives.

I begrudge Templeton nothing, but the query registers as a threat to the heap of social anxiety that cringes just below my well-hewn persona. Perhaps it’s too personal or too undeveloped to express, or maybe I haven’t taken the time to cook up a pithy, on-brand answer-something affably wry with just enough poignancy to suggest I’m human.

This isn’t the first time I’ve failed this test. Remember Cafe Gratitude, the vegan cafe on Marin’s Miracle Mile? They were known for a peculiar ritual that arrived with the bill-the server would ask, in that sanctimonious tone peculiar to aughts-era millennials, “What are you grateful for?”

Sudden, self-righteous rage was harder to come by back then so I suppose I should’ve been grateful for that. As with Templeton now, I hadn’t worked up a bit back then, so I improvised something about my disdain for ending sentences in a preposition.

“There’s no ‘attitude’ in ‘gratitude,’” they replied.