Haley Mills, where are you when we need you?

Thursday seems somewhat misnamed this year.

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. For most folks 2020 has been, at the very least, grim and annoying and, for all too many of us, a full-on tragic disaster. So as we sit here contemplating a frozen turkey pot pie and Netflix on the sofa to mark a lonesome holiday celebratioin, we might be forgiven if thanks isn’t top of the mind in these waning days of the new century’s second decade.

And let’s be upfront about it, we’ve got lots not to be thankful for. We can start with a defeated president sulking in the Oval Office, tweeting out to the American public, “Nyaah, nyaah, nyahh! You’re all meanies and you stink.” We have COVID cases rising at a fever pitch, emptying schools, filling hospitals and showing few signs of letting up. With more than a quarter million dead and millions more sickened, the resurgent plague casts a long shadow – even longer for folks out of work, out of money and soon to be forced out of their homes.

Oh, and by the way, winter’s comin’…

It would be enough to drive a guy to drink, except the bars are closed and friends and neighbors are more likely to be nursing the virus than dropping by to nurse a Tom & Jerry … or two.

It seems there’s nothing left but to rekindle my lust for Haley Mills.

Ahhhh, you have to be of a certain age and gender to understand that one. Let us say that in the early 1960s Disney Studio’s bottom line was significantly bolstered by the unadmitted, unacknowledged starry-eyed crushes of legions of pre-adolescent boys for the preternaturally cute British actress who veritably spewed spunk and perkiness across the silver screen. I have to admit, and a bit of a shamefaced admission it is, that her 1960 breakout role has had a life-long impact that not even the best efforts of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer have managed to dislodge.

Yes, it’s Pollyanna … insufferably saccharine, pathologically cheerful, a giggly Dr. Pangloss in a frilly frock. The Disney-fied authoress of the Glad Game – that calculated imposition of a positive spin on the grimmest of reality, e.g., a Pollyanna’s reaction to death – “More air for the rest of us.”

It seems we’ve already been in for a bit of pandemic Glad Gaming. For months Facebook’s been littered with positive reassurances that 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 deaths aren’t all that bad, because Dr. Fauci once said there could be a lot more – and besides, most people don’t die of COVID, they might get real sick, but that’s OK cuz’ people get sick from other stuff all the time. So it’s all for the best and couldn’t be better.

I think Haley could have done better than that.

But even for Pollyanna, this year’s a stretch.

Still, sipping coffee here in a warm house, breakfast crumbs still clinging to my shirt, lunch tucked away in the fridge, family still employed and in good health, I have plenty to complain about. Plenty to be thankful for, too.

Yeah, a lot about this year sucks. That’s reality. We gotta deal with it.

But sometimes we need to look deeper. I mean, who was the first guy to come across a lobster and say, “Hmmmm, that certainly looks appetizing…”

Now it may be a stretch to look at 2020 as the equivalent of Surf & Turf, but here at the end there are some signs that things are looking up, and the fact that we’re here, reading this, means, so far, we’ve made it through … something to be thankful for in itself.

And on December 22, the days start getting longer.

Count on it.

If nothing else, we can be glad about that. Thinkin’ about it, we might find even more.