I'm thankful for mine, too

This is a fitting Memorial Day story.

So anyone who knows us in "real life" knows that our house is, for all intents and purposes, a hostel. There are no less than three people living on the bottom floor at all times, two to three on top (we live in a duplex), and often, one person crashing indefinitely in our downstairs guest bedroom. Sometimes for a night. Sometimes nine months.

Because of this, it's not unusual to wake up on a weekend morning, and discover a friend - or as the case may be, a brand new acquaintance - brewing coffee and whistling in his underwear. Some may find this lack of privacy disconcerting; for some reason, it's never really bothered me. (Unless you touch my laptop, and then the gloves freaking come off).

So there I was, yesterday morning, standing still half asleep in front of the bathroom mirror and struggling to correctly administer the toothpaste onto the toothbrush. I heard a guitar strumming in our guest bedroom next door, where one of our friends - let's call him Jack - had crashed for the night, and he was playing what sounded like a children's song with a simple, upbeat refrain:

"I'm thankful for my family,
I'm thankful for my family,
I'm thankful for my family,
My family loves me."

Sweet, right? Next he moves onto, "I'm thankful for the air/I'm thankful for the air/I'm thankful for the air/For the air that I breathe."

Ok, so Jack's strumming through the things he's thankful for: the sky, his friends, his teachers. And before I go any further with this story, I should tell you that Jack is not only a peddler of children's songs, but in many ways, is a child himself. What prompted his burst of joyful song? Why are zebras so awesome-looking? We may never know - just the immutable forces of nature at work here.

So it's with complete innocence and unadulterated joy that Jack dives into the body parts he's thankful for: "I'm thankful for my head," followed by "I'm thankful for my throat," descending on down to the organs, like lungs, intestines, etc. (Have you thanked your intestines today?)

After Jack wraps up "I'm thankful for my stomach," I realized I'm intrigued to see where he'll go next, what with the song's "the head bone's connected to the/neck bone, and the neck bone's connected to the back bone"-like logic. So I stop brushing my teeth. I leaned closer to the door.

A brief pause in strumming.

And then:

"I'm thankful for my ANUS, I'm thankful for my ANUS...."