Please Help Me Out with the Dysfunctional Family Bingo Contest, You Could Win an Autographed Book

* Cross-posted on the Picket Fence Post blog. *

For the past few years I’ve addressed the issue of holiday stress – particularly when you gather multiple generations together for a high-pressure holiday dinner — by creating Dysfunctional Family Bingo cards. I take awkward-but-realistic scenarios that might occur during (before or after) your family’s Thanksgiving dinner and place each one into a box on a BINGO card and pray that no one checks off enough boxes to actually win.

In some twisted way, writing up all of these scenarios amuses me and serves as a reminder that EVERYONE experiences a bit of familial dysfunction during holiday dinners so we may as well just find the humor in them. (For the full history of Dysfunctional Family Bingo, go here.)

What kinds of scenarios am I talking about? For the past couple years, I’ve used a few of my own holiday experiences (though there’s no way I’m ‘fessing up which ones are autobiographical) as well as some which my friends have shared with me in order to fill out each box on the Bingo card. Here are a few from my 2008 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card:

– Some older children at the gathering taught your impressionable young child how to spit, the glory of purple nurples and new vocabulary words like the “F” word.

– Your mother suggests that you join her in starting a diet in the new year, noting that your pants are getting “a bit snug” and asks you if you’ve ever heard of the term “muffin top.”

– It gets heated when several members of the family cannot agree on the best, fastest route to take from this location to the mall.

– A male relative drags you outside and points out everything that’s wrong with your house, from the roof and gutters, to the window screens and the chimney.

– Maxi pads, whose box you had tucked away in a bathroom cabinet, were taken out by a young nephew who decided to remove the paper strips on the back and stick them all over the bathroom wall in a random pattern.

This year, I’m going to ask you, my smart and witty blog readers, to please contribute YOUR OWN oddball/dysfunctional family holiday dinner scenarios which could happen (or have happened) during the celebration of Thanksgiving. I’ll use reader suggestions along with my own to create my 2009 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card. Please e-mail me your contribution (everybody’s got to have at least one amusing scenario) — to meredithobrien@hotmail.com — no later than noon on Monday, November 23.

The best four contributions (as determined by me) will earn their creators an autographed and personalized copy of my collection of humor/parenting columns, Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, where the motto is, “Parenting is best done with a hearty sense of humor.” Looking forward to reading your e-mails!

Image credit: AP.