Debone: (v) to remove the bones from meat, fish or fowl

“Keep your eye on the prize.”

It is a phrase that normally is applied to noble ventures promoting moral fiber or spiritual ecstasy.

But I shall now trivialize it.

Because one of the duties I certainly hate on Thanksgiving Day is deboning the turkey

I don’t know why.

I think the main reason may be that by the time I get to the job of deboning the turkey, I am so sick of eating turkey that the sight and touch of it is annoying.

But it always falls my lot to do this particular job. I think it’s because most people share my dismay over defrocking the fowl. So to keep themselves from being drafted for the duty, they offer praise to someone else (that being me).

“No one does it like you, Dad!”

“You find all the meat that’s hiding away, in all the nooks and crannies, behind the bone and cartilage…”

So I keep my eye on the prize.

The duty is made more pleasant by the notion of having a big bowl of loose turkey flesh in the refrigerator that can be grabbed in handfuls, put on a plate, lightly salted and consumed in tiny chunks of delicacy.

Actually, I like cold turkey better than hot turkey.

And I like deboned turkey better than the kind that sits beautifully upright on the table, held together by its skeleton.

Yet I would never recommend going “cold turkey.”

It’s my understanding that it has other definitions.