Like many men, I am different from my girlfriend in ways which are noticeable, and, in my opinion, somewhat fortunate.

Take the Thanksgiving turkey (and I mean that literally. Please come over to our house, open the refrigerator, shove aside everything growing green fuzz, and take this carcass away before it is reincarnated as turkey lasagna or turkey tetracycline or whatever new concoction awaits the family). But take Thanksgiving--my girlfriend prefers small birds that fit nicely into the roasting pan and which can be cooked in a few hours.

"Hah!" I can be quoted as sneering. I trace my own gender lineage to that proud, hairy group of hunter-gatherers who, prior to the invention of TV remote control, would pick up their spears, huddle, and then go out and pull down a huge bison for dinner, stopping at the bar on the way home for a couple of cave brews. So when I go to the store for a turkey, I find a TURKEY: a mammoth, many-pound fowl with drumsticks as large as my thighs and wings you could park a car under.

Words cannot describe the delight on my girlfriend's face when my neighbors help me carry the bird into the refrigerator, where, following the instructions, it is left to thaw for a period of six months. (My girlfriend often has several interesting but impractical suggestions on where else we might stick the turkey for this thawing procedure.) Cooking begins around Halloween, a slow-roasting process which varies from my mother's recipe in that there are no flames, nor threats of divorce "if anybody says a word about how the turkey tastes."

I enjoy every step of turkey preparation, particularly since I am not involved in any of it. Well, that's not entirely true--at one point, I am asked to reach into the mouth of the turkey and retrieve the giblets, which turns out to be a bag of what looks like pieces of a mob hit. (I realize I am not, technically speaking, putting my hand in the bird's "mouth," but I'd rather not dwell on this.) How the turkey manages to swallow this stuff in the first place is beyond me. Traditionally, we open this bag, dump the contents into a pan of water, and boil the results. Only the cat is happy with this development. From time to time, I stir the bubbling mixture and stare at the contents, which do not appear any more appetizing for having been heated. When I judge what my kids refer to as the "turkey guts stew" to be completely cooked, I throw it away.

Like the pilgrim families who started this tradition, I wait until half-time to carve the bird, a surgical operation which my dog watches with mad intensity. Then I disconnect my son from the video game and my daughters from the telephone, turn off the television (well, unless the game is really close) and we sit down for one of the great meals of the year.

As wonderful as this all is, by the fourth or fifth night my appetite for turkey variations has waned, and I provide valuable feedback to my girlfriend by making gagging noises at dinner. Her verbal (as opposed to projectile) response to this is to imply that it is somehow my fault we have so many leftovers, to which I logically reply, "hey, YOU cooked it."

The fact is, our turkey-induced bulimia stems mainly from the fact that a turkey burrito and a turkey omelet and tornadoes de turkey all come from the same place. We've tried reducing leftovers by inviting family members and friends to join us, but everyone pretends to find it unpleasant when I drink all the wine and then insist on shouting out my theories about the Kennedy assassination. Apparently I'm the only one who knows how to get in the holiday spirit.

"Maybe next year you'll buy a smaller one," my girlfriend suggests as she places my turkey waffles in front of me. I can only sigh at this non-sequitur. "What if, instead of turkey, the pilgrims had eaten buffalo?" I retort. "Would you want me bring home a four-pound bison?"

As usual, I've put her at a loss for words.

Write to the author at bruce@wbrucecameron.com

W. Bruce Cameron is the author of "Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter" and "How to Remodel a Man." 

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