the manufacturing of which is contributing to the destruction of our planet?
I am sorry, but that is just sick.
Besides, at one point during the broadcast I caught sight of Lilly standing in the crowd outside Office Max on Broadway and Thirty-Seventh, her video camera clutched to her slightly squished-in face (so much like a pug) as a float carrying Miss America and William Shatner of Star Trek fame passed by. So I know Lilly is going to take care of denouncing Macy's on the next episode of her public access television show, Lilly Tells It Like It Is (every Friday night
at nine, Manhattan cable channel 67).
12:00 p.m.
Mr. Gianini Junior's sister arrives with her husband, their two kids and the pumpkin pies. The kids, who are my age, are twins — a boy, Nathan, and a girl, Claire. I know right away that Claire and I are not going to get along, because when we are introduced she looks me up and down the way the cheerleaders do in the hallway at school and goes, in a very snotty voice, 'You're the one who's supposed to be a princess?' And while I am perfectly aware that at five foot nine inches tall, with no visible breasts, feet the size of snowshoes, and hair that sits in a tuft on my head like the end
of a cotton bud, I am the biggest freak in the freshman class of Albert Einstein High School For Boys (made coeducational circa 1975), I do not appreciate being reminded of it by girls who do not even bother finding out that beneath this mutant facade beats the heart of a person who is only striving, just like everybody else in this world, to find self-actualization.
Not that I even care what Mr. Gianini's niece Claire thinks of me. I mean, she is wearing a pony-skin miniskirt. And
it is not even imitation pony-skin. She must know that a horse had to die just so she could have that skirt, but she obviously doesn't care.
Now Claire has pulled out her mobile phone and gone out on to the deck where the reception is best (even though it
is thirty degrees outside, she apparently doesn't mind. She has that pony-skin to keep her warm, after all). She keeps looking in at me through the sliding glass doors and laughing as she talks on her phone.
I don't care. At least I am not wearing the skin of a murdered equine. Nathan - who is dressed in baggy jeans and has
a pager, in addition to a lot of gold jewellery - asks his grandfather if he can change the channel. So instead of traditional Thanksgiving viewing options, such as football or the Lifetime channel's made-for-TV movie marathon,
we are now forced to watch MTV 2. Nathan knows all the songs and sings along with them. Most of them have dirty words that have been bleeped out, but Nathan sings them anyway.
1:00 p.m.
The food is served. We begin eating.
1:15 p.m.
We finish eating.
1:20 p.m.
I help Mrs. Gianini clean up. She says not to be ridiculous and that I should go and 'have a nice gossip' with Claire.
It is frightening, if you think about it, how clueless old people can be sometimes.
Instead of going to have a nice gossip with Claire, I stay where I am and tell Mrs. Gianini how much I am enjoying having her son live with us. Mr. G is very good about helping around the house and has even taken over my old job
of cleaning the toilets. Not to mention the thirty-six-inch TV, pinball machine and football table he brought with him when he moved in.
Mrs. Gianini is immensely gratified to hear this, you can just tell. Old people like to hear nice stuff about their kids, even if their kid, like Mr. Gianini, is thirty-nine-and-a-half years old.
3:00 p.m.
We have to leave if we are going to beat the traffic home. I say goodbye. Claire does not say goodbye back to me, but Nathan does. He advises me to keep it real. Mrs. Gianini gives us a lot of leftover turkey. I thank her, even though I don't eat turkey, being a vegetarian and am virulently opposed to the mass slaughter of helpless fowls every time a holiday rolls around.
6:30 p.m.
We finally make it back into the city, after spending three and a half hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the
Long Island Expressway. Though there is nothing very express about it, if you ask me.
I barely have time to change into my baby-blue, floor-length Armani sheath dress and matching ballet fiats before
the limo honks downstairs and Lars, my bodyguard, arrives to escort me to my second Thanksgiving dinner.
7:30 p.m.
Arrive at the Plaza Hotel. I am greeted by the concierge, who announces I me to the masses assembled in the Palm Court:
'Presenting Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo.'
God forbid he should just say Mia.
My father, the Prince of Genovia, and his mother, the Dowager Princess, have rented the Palm Court for the evening in order to throw a Thanksgiving banquet for all of their friends. Despite my strenuous objections, Dad and Grandmere refuse to leave New York City until I have learned everything there is to know about being a princess . . . or until my formal introduction to the Genovian people the day before Christmas, whichever comes first. I have assured them that it isn't as if I am going to show up at the castle and start hurling olives at the ladies-in-waiting and scratching myself under the arms. I mean, I am fourteen years old-I do have some idea how to act, for crying out loud.
But Grandmere, at least, does not seem to believe this and so she is still subjecting me to daily princess lessons. Lilly recently contacted the United Nations to see whether these lessons constitute a human rights violation. She believes it is unlawful to force a minor to sit for hours practising tipping her soup bowl away from her - 'Always, always, away from you, Amelia!' - in order to scrape up a few drops of lobster bisque.
The UN has so far been unsympathetic to my plight, but that, I believe, is only because they have never actually met Grandmere. Were they to witness for themselves the frightful visage ~ made all the scarier by the fact that years ago Grandmere had her eyeliner permanently tattooed on to her lids, not to mention the fact that she shaves off her eyebrows every day and then draws on new ones in black pencil — hovering over me during these torture sessions, they'd send over a hostage negotiator before you could say Kofi Annan.