Family's Thanksgiving Dinner Canceled After Son Was Unable to Find the 1 Ingredient His Mother Requested

One man came up empty-handed after searching for a single smoked turkey leg for his mother, which led to their family's Thanksgiving dinner not happening

A man is questioning everything about his relationship with his mother after she canceled their family's Thanksgiving celebrations over one missing ingredient.

In a recent post on Reddit's "AITA" [Am I The A------?] subreddit, a user, who identified himself as a 24-year-old man, revealed that his family's Thanksgiving dinner did not happen due to him being unable to track down "a single smoked turkey leg" ahead of the meal.

According to the original poster (OP), his mother requested a smoked turkey leg as part of the dinner, which he claimed he spent hours driving around to each grocery store in his area looking for. In a reply, he clarified that she asked him for the specific ingredient the morning of Thanksgiving, and he spent about four hours in total searching for her request.

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"I literally drove around for hours going into different stores looking for it and asking questions, [but] came up empty-handed in the end for it," the user wrote, adding that his mother sent him one final reminder to pick up the turkey leg the morning of Thanksgiving, but he didn't have time to reply until she arrived at his house.

"... I guess it was too late," he wrote. "Now she’s saying how we don’t appreciate her and how we don’t love her and I feel like a piece of s---."

"My younger brothers are also upset," he finished, turning to Reddit to help him figure out who was actually in the wrong. "They went to bed early without a word or wanting to eat dinner. I just need to know if I actually am an a------. I feel so bad."

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The r/AITA community was quick to reply with a resounding "no," especially after OP offered some clarifications about his mother's behavior.

"Why is a whole meal dependent on one turkey leg?" one commenter wrote, to which OP replied: "I wish I [could] answer that question. I even suggested she [could] improvise something else and she told me to look more."

Many commenters also wrote about how the "the turkey leg [isn't] the real problem," and that OP's mother might have some other issues to deal with before their Thanksgiving turkey dilemma could be solved.

"Has your mom always been like this?" one commenter wrote, suggesting that getting older might be causing her some problems and the OP should simply give her some grace. "Is there a major upset in her life?"

"Yeah, she’s been like this always," OP clarified. "Everything has to be perfect or the best no matter what. You can do just about everything right but if you make one mistake or miss something small, everything good you have done before becomes invalid. She did just turn 50 this year though."

"[Not the a------]," another user declared. "It's completely unreasonable to pin the failure of an entire Thanksgiving event on someone's response to a text. Life happens, phones get missed ... It's not an 'ingredient emergency' if it can result in the cancellation of a holiday. Everyone, even moms, need to learn the art of backup plans and not overreact when all doesn't go precisely as envisioned."