WEBVTT

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I don't know if any
of you have done this.

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It used to be a
more common thing

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and I think to do where after
Thanksgiving you would take

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the wishbone out of the turkey.

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It would, one person
would grab one end

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and you would grab the other
to see whoever got their wish.

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And this is "The Custom".

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"Gravy sliced down to the bone.

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Every year, all that's left
of the Thanksgiving feast

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is the wishbone.

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Stained the color of tea
or rain seeping into wood,

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it could be beautiful.

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A singular harp from which no
one has learned to coax a tune,

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or an ivory white bow of stars
that never shot a wounding

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shaft, but instead impelled a
feathered being into the air.

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A hinge for the drumming
of earthly wings.

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But the custom of the breastbone
is that only two of you

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can fight over
this good fortune.

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Only one of you can win.

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So son Esau plucks the
wishbone from the carcass,

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son Jacob grabs the other end.

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Sometimes the bone tears
and twists apart as slowly

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as the strings of DNA
that bind you together,

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the long fibers unraveling
in your opposing grips.

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Other times already
brittle, it snaps

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like the retort of
a branch breaking

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from the curse big tree.

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Or the jawbone with which
Samson slew so many Philistines.

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Except for that one year
when your mother hung

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the disarticulated blessing
to dry in the kitchen window,

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then painting it red transformed
the hollow and the skeleton

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into a small sleigh for a
velvet coated Santa Claus.

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His cheerful gaze staring
blindly through a decade

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of Christmases.

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It has been the custom
to fight over the bones.

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You've always tried
to be the first

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to grasp the better
end, you and your Cain

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or Abel torquing across
the kitchen table

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using the leverage of your
bodies until one of you

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is left triumphant clutching
luck's fat knuckle,

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the other it's splintery end"

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