The word “stuffing” had a lot of connotations when I was a young. None of them had anything to do with food.

Sofas had stuffing, but then again, I rarely heard the word ‘sofa”. We sat on “couches”. The first time I heard the word “sofa” I thought it was ‘Sofia”, and I never did figure out why anyone had to sit on the poor woman. Once I heard someone say they had to re-stuff their “Sofia. This haunts me still.

I digress, Teddy bears had stuffing for insides and, Baseballs had it. We were urged to “knock the stuffing out of it”. If you caught a good fish, or shot a deer, or even a duck, you could have them ‘stuffed and mounted”. I was mightily confused.

Thanksgiving turkeys, however, did not have stuffing. Although, sometimes my aunt did shove a whole stick of margarine in there. Stuffing, I would be educated, was another word for dressing. And our dressing, as God intended, was cooked separately in a metal pan and involved a pan of pre-cooked cornbread. The cornbread mixed with onion, sage and fatty golden nectar from boiled turkey parts…(usually the pieces that were normally thrown away).

It wasn’t something the great cooks in my family were willing to debate. Stick your hand up the back end of a raw turkey? “Said my sweet mama, shaking her head violently from side to side… “That is not natural”.

But the word stuffing was everywhere come November. I heard in on TV, usually accompanied by images of a massive turkey with a golden cascade of breadcrumbs tumbling from its insides. Was I missing out? Why didn’t we have stuffing if they had stuffing on “Father Knows Best”?