When I was married to my first husband who was in the AF and we were living in base housing, we made a practice of inviting service men to dinner, the ones who had no wife or family w/them. One Thanksgiving my parents visited and we also invited a couple of my husband's friends. Given our youth and AF pay, thankfully my parents paid for the turkey but I still didn't have a lot of cookware, so I oven roasted the turkey on a cookie sheet. Hey, it was all I had!

We lived in an old restored southern mansion in VA that was divided into apartments for the servicemen. The floor coverings were linoleum except for the living room and that included the bedrooms. My son was not even 2 years old at the time and his bedroom was just off the kitchen; there were 3 steps leading from the kitchen into his bedroom. The dining room table was set, everyone was gathered 'round and eager to dig in to the feast. I took the turkey out of the oven and it slid all over the cookie sheet. I tried, unsuccessfully, to balance it until I could get it to the counter but it slid off the cookie sheet, down the steps and under my son's bed. No one knew what had happened but I was hysterical w/laughter while I tried to get the turkey out from under the bed but, of course, it was slippery and I just batted it all over the place. I finally managed to get my hands on it and I took it back into the kitchen, rinsed it off as best I could, took it to the dining table and no one was ever the wiser. I laughed through the entire dinner, much to my husband's chagrin.