It ought to be the simplest holiday of them all. Everything is predetermined, after all, from the oven temperature to seating arrangements. You know that bowls of nuts and dip need to go out a few hours before dinnertime. You know when the parade is on and what time it finishes. You know who is allergic to what, who likes dark meat and who is bringing dessert. Simple. Why then, does Thanksgiving so frequently turn into a disaster?

We’re not talking about Aunt Gladys spilling gravy on her favorite pant suit or Uncle Liver Spot getting drunk and falling asleep with the dog, either. We’re talking Disaster of the Epic Variety, like accidentally dropping acid to treat a headache or repainting clean, white walls with a spray of mashed yams. We’re talking Tofurkey bad.

And yet in the midst of it — in spite of the drunken uncles and turkeys that want to fly off the serving trays — people almost always seem to salvage the essence of the holiday. They can put aside overcooked turkey and post-dinner hallucinations to remember that ultimately, Thanksgiving is a time to remember the good things in our lives. And that ability alone has the power to transform a bad holiday into a memorable one.

Or not. Some things are just too much to overcome, like a bad trip or bugs in the dessert or ending up at the kids’ table in spite of all your adult accomplishments. We completely understand, and that’s why we’ve given these hard-luck turkey gobblers a chance to unburden themselves. Hopefully this coming year will be better. And if not, we hope your Thanksgiving disasters will be fall-down hilarious so we can do this all over again next year.

Doug, Auburn: Better dining through chemistry?

It was a traditional Thanksgiving a few years back with family, friends, food and wine aplenty. Maybe it was the lighting in the late fall kitchen, maybe it was the overabundance of two-buck-Chuck, but I was certainly working on a terrible migraine.

With football over, dessert served and me on another glass of a fine cardbordeaux to stifle the now all-consuming pain stretching across my optic nerve and threatening to split my skull, my cousin took pity. “Here,” she offered, as she handed me a small blister pack containing a pill roughly the size of a deer tick.

Without another thought, I popped it into my mouth and awaited the results. The next several hours were a disjointed comedy of what I thought I was doing and what was actually taking place before my horrified family. From what I am told, people were yelled at, furniture assaulted, virgin ears defiled and what was left of my dignity shattered before my wife finally put me to bed for the next 15 hours.

Wendy Watkins: Eating with the wee folks

When I was city editor of the Sun-Journal, all those years ago, I went to Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house in New Hampshire.

I was in my early 30s.

They sat me at the kids’ table.

All my married cousins got to sit at the grown-ups’ table.

Seriously: The day before, I had had a meeting with then-Maine Gov. John McKernan about something — I forget what — and then the next day I was sitting at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.

Isn’t family awesome?

John Ellis, South Paris: Enjoying your uncles and ants

My mother made her pumpkin pie on Wednesday and set her pie basket by the door to take to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. After the meal, my mother went and got her pie out of the basket and set it on the table. As we all admired the beautiful pie, someone asked, “Why is the nutmeg moving?” The top of the pie was crawling with tiny ants.

Maureen Andrew, Greene: I yam what I yam

My husband was stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, we were a young couple who had just hosted our families to a fine Thanksgiving feast in our “MOQ” (married officers quarters) apartment in the shipyard. As everyone knows, leftovers are a big part of the dinner. After the family had all gone home, must have been the day after the holiday, we warmed up the hot dishes in our tiny kitchen and walked them into the dining room. My husband carried in the open dish of hot yams and proceeded to trip on the braided rug. The yams went flying. Everywhere. (So did a few choice words from both of us!) The yams were especially partial to the very clean, white walls of the military apartment, now turning a lovely shade of orange! We scrubbed and scrubbed that night to get all the yam off! Can’t believe we passed inspection that spring when we moved out. Guess they didn’t look too closely at the walls! For years after that we would discover a spot or two of the old yam stuck to a table or chair leg that we’d missed and we’d laugh about it all over again!

Sandy Turcotte: Hold the dressing

It was Thanksgiving morning in the late ’70s and my husband and I were hosting Thanksgiving dinner in our mobile home for my parents, my sister, her husband and four children. We woke up to no heat. We called a repairman and he was able to fix the furnace. Just as he left I noticed everyone was arriving. I hurried to pour the salad dressing on the bed of lettuce and I shook the bottle only to see the entire bottle of salad dressing fly all over the wall. Oops, the cover was off! It was a dripping mess! After we cleaned up the mess and were ready to sit down to dinner we noticed the furnace was not shutting off. We had to call the repairman back and as we were beginning to eat he showed up. He made a quick adjustment to the furnace and when he stood up his shoulder hit a shelf on the wall that had breakable collectibles. What a mess when they hit the tile floor!

But after that, it ended up to be a good day and we learned to eat salad without dressing!

Jane Brown, Otisfield: Fully dressed

I needed to buy a turkey that was not frozen so that I could cook it the next day. What do you think my surprise was when I bought a kosher turkey?

It was totally covered with feathers. I had to pluck each feather out with tweezers. As I recall it took me a couple of hours to do that. Needless to say, I did not start the holiday off in the best of moods. I don’t know what a “kosher” turkey is either, but I surely would never have imagined, even now, that it could possibly mean “comes with feathers.”

I don’t think I have offered to cook the turkey since.

Happy Thanksgiving. May your blessings be many, and free from feathers.

Jo-Anne Teacutter, Greene: Slide me some skin

I’ve got two Thanksgiving disasters:

1. Thought it was a good idea to put hot lumpy gravy in a blender = 3rd-degree burns

2. Mother-in-law came over and I cooked an extra large turkey in a too small cooking bag and the skin came off with the bag and I tried to piece it back on like a puzzle.

Meredith Kendall, Lewiston: Yum. Tofurkey!

I went to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of my dear friends Betsy and Dave. They have a big vibrant family and a house full of love. There are children, grandchildren, brothers, football, friends, three cats and five dogs. There is one big room where we gather: combination kitchen, dining room and living room. The wood stove is blasting, baskets hang from the ceiling, and there are lit candles everywhere. Betsy and Dave make everything from scratch. They snip rosemary sprigs, roast vegetables from their extensive garden and grate chocolate over fresh whipped cream. One year there were more homemade pies than people. That was a good year.

Anyway, here’s the disaster part.

Betsy and Dave invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. They worried about what to serve me, because I’m vegetarian. I guess they thought the 25 side dishes wouldn’t be enough. Betsy asked me about Tofurkey. Oh yes, I’d heard of it and always wanted to try it. I was curious.

Betsy made me Tofurkey and served it alongside the heaping bowls of mashed potatoes, glazed yams, green bean casserole and roasted Brussels sprouts. The Tofurkey was a dismal puddle of brown sludge. I looked hungrily at the bright cranberries and piles of stuffing. Tofurkey. I asked for it and here it was. I dug in. Didn’t taste any better than it looked. Thank goodness for those 30 homemade pies. Tofurkey was a disaster, but the love, laughter and 30 pies saved Thanksgiving.

Sue Paul, Dixfield: Smells wonderful!

My sister-in-law still brings this up: We were having Thanksgiving dinner at her house and she asked me to stir the gravy in the crock, so I did and snuck a taste of it . . . I turned around to see her laughing at me. I was stirring/tasting the crock of potpourri, not gravy!

Jill Doughty Gray, Farmington: A sour response

A couple years ago my mother made pumpkin pies, but left out the sugar. The next day she called horrified, asking my husband if he had eaten any of the pie yet. He did and admitted it wasn’t as good as usual!

Karen Clarke, Jefferson: Spoiled rotten

My mom ordered a fresh turkey for Thanksgiving and when she got up at 5 a.m. to put it in the oven, the turkey was spoiled! We ended up eating some frozen meatballs that she had in the freezer. I’m wondering if the turkey would have been a better option. . . . And then there was the time my grandmother brought the turkey and left the bag of giblets inside. We were getting ready to cut the turkey and could read some directions through the skin. It was awesome! Thanksgiving in my family is always an adventure!

Diane Poulin, Livermore: A grace filled with gratitude  

Several years ago I had two tickets to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas concert in Portland on the day before Thanksgiving. I just wasn’t feeling up to going, so I gave the tickets to my daughter and her boyfriend. They went and had a great time. After the concert they went to the Old Port for a bite to eat. Long story short, my daughter drove her boyfriend back home to Auburn . . . but she did not make it back home to Livermore.

Thanksgiving morning I got up and noticed her car was not in the driveway, which was not unusual. My phone beeped to let me know I had a message and I figured it was my daughter letting me know she was staying in Auburn because she was too tired to drive. Imagine my shock when I heard a male voice saying he was calling from the Sheriff’s Department to report that my daughter had fallen asleep at the wheel and been in an accident, but she would be fine.

So here it was, Thanksgiving morning, and I had to find two car seats for my granddaughters so I could go to Central Maine Medical Center to get my daughter instead of doing the usual Thanksgiving Day preparations.

So, a huge thank-you to the lady on Route 4 in Turner who could not sleep in the very wee hours of the morning and heard my daughter’s accident and called 9-1-1, then raced out to comfort her. Thank you to the staff from Turner Rescue who took good care of my daughter. Thank you to the gentleman who let my daughter use his New England Patriots sweatshirt as a pillow while they were cutting her out of the car (sorry it got ruined). Thank you to my brother who went to the yard where the car had been towed, removed my granddaughters’ car seats from the completely wrecked car, then brought them to me so we could get to the hospital. Thank you to the exceedingly kind nurse at CMMC who took me aside before we saw my daughter and warned me that my daughter looked pretty awful and I should see her before I let her two little girls see her to prepare them, you understand.

Most of all, I thank the good lord that I had my daughter home for Thanksgiving. She was broken but we got her home.

Needless to say, Thanksgiving was not what I planned. We did not celebrate it until the weekend after (even though my daughter still could not eat solids). Grace at the table was not the usual “Thanks for the yummy food” that year. It was oh-so-much more.

Lewiston Fire Investigator Paul Ouellette’s Thanksgiving safety tips

With fire-wise common sense, you can make sure tragedy does not come between you and the festive holiday you have planned. Follow these fire prevention tips to help you and your family enjoy a safe and happy Thanksgiving:

• Keep smoke detectors on every level of the house, in every bedroom and in the halls adjacent to the bedrooms. Test smoke detectors monthly and replace batteries at least twice a year.

• Have a fire extinguisher available not more than 10 feet from the stove, on the exit side of the room. Make sure that you know how to use your fire extinguisher.

• Start holiday cooking with a clean stove and oven.

• Keep the kitchen off-limits to young children and adults who are not helping with food preparations.

• When cooking, do not wear dangling jewelry or clothing with loose sleeves.

• Cook on the back burners when possible and turn pot handles in.

• Never leave cooking foods unattended. If you must leave the kitchen while cooking, turn off the stove or have someone else watch what is being cooked.

• Keep Thanksgiving decorations and kitchen clutter away from sources of direct heat.

• If candles are part of your holiday decorations:

— Make sure all candles are out before going to bed or leaving the house.

— Place out of children’s reach and where guests will not accidentally brush against them.

— Place candle in a sturdy fireproof candleholder where it cannot be knocked over.

— The candle should not have combustible decorations or other materials around it.