Hand turkey.

Some of you may be wondering what this is. Allow me to explain.

In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving in November. One of the most venerable traditions connected with this holiday is the creation of hand turkeys.

Every year, massive hand turkey output is achieved by converting elementary schools into poultry art sweatshops. All pretenses of traditional learning are swept aside as students are forced to draw turkey after turkey for days on end. The halls of the school could be wallpapered three times over with this effort. Indeed, some schools even hang the turkeys in the halls so that the children are constantly reminded of the need to meet their quotas.

When it’s time for Thanksgiving break, the school sends the children home burdened with reams of hand turkeys. Studies have shown that, relative to body mass, the average child carries home more handprint gobblers than a Grand Canyon burro would be capable of carrying.  The art collection is displayed at home until three days after Thanksgiving or until one of the turkeys has fallen off the fridge when you just wanted to get a glass of juice and now you’ve stepped on it and there’s turkey glitter on the floor again how annoying approximately 2,000 times, whichever comes first. (It’s usually the second option.)

In earlier times, the hand turkeys were burned over the course of months to provide heat for the family home throughout the winter. Nowadays, many parents feel that such an experience might be upsetting for their children. The more PC approach is to simply have a ceremonial destruction ceremony, which involves sneaking large stacks of hand turkeys out to the trash while the child is asleep.  This ensures the traumatic full realization of the futility of their labors won’t affect the children until they’ve grown up to be productive corporate citizens and even if Uncle Vincent drunkenly blurts out the truth at a future Thanksgiving gathering it’s really too late to back out now so tough luck.

Or something like that. I’m probably lying. Probably.

The point is if you grew up in the U.S. odds are you’ve earned the “hand turkey” merit badge already.

+10 points if you draw a hand turkey right now and post a link to it in the comments.

Also, I’ll attempt to draw a hand turkey in the first three genres suggested in the comments. One suggestion per person. Done!

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