Ten Situations to Avoid This Thanksgiving

​ If you're not going home for Thanksgiving tomorrow, you have a lot to be thankful for. Go find that perfect holiday dive bar and count your blessings.

For the rest of you: Thanksgiving can be an extremely uncomfortable time spent with family and old friends. Here, in no specific order, are ten of the most awkward situations you may find yourself in over the holiday weekend. Hopefully this list will allow you time to prepare a few exit strategies. (Note: Pretending to text won't deliver you from all these encounters.)

Good luck. You'll need it.

For your convenience, below is a probability scale of these situations actually happening, using this Butterball Breakdown (BB.)

= Unlikely to happen.

= In Thanksgiving parlance, you're mince meat. 

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Debra LaFave.

​2. Drunken encounter with the teacher you had a crush on in high school.
While Debra LaFave was convicted of statutory rape involving a tryst with one of her students, the prospect of you actually running into that teacher of yours who stirred your fantasies back in high school are pretty remote. And if it does happen, it's best to take the high road. Unless of course you have no extended family enrolled in said school and no one would ever, ever find out. At which point we suggest cranking up the '80s rock, cause you're living in a Van Halen video.

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​ 3. Spoon-feeding.
Feeding old relatives too feeble to eat themselves, certainly can be a harrowing and messy experience. Although as we've learned from 30 Rock, people of all ages can at times require a little assistance delivering food to gullet. But at Thanksgiving, the only time you should absolutely leap at spoon-feeding is when it involves a baby. They're mostly adorable, they don't talk (much) and most importantly they distract you from talking to your second-cousin about his Harley-Davidson or her illegitimate child.

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​ 4. The question: "Why aren't you as successful as your brother/cousin/sister?"
Not everyone can be like the chap above, with a state-of-the-art PC and pictures of his rock-climbing adventures posted on his wall. So if the topic of your nose-diving career, or more likely, perpetual unemployment comes up, spare everyone the story about your job prospects and ask someone to pass the yams.

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​5. Downtime with cousins.
There's room for one more on that couch above. If you don't think so, wait until Thanksgiving when you're ass-to-ass with your extended family watching that awful Detroit Lions game on a velvet sofa. You're better off faking the trots and exiting for the bathroom. There you're at least assured a seat by yourself.