“Hello, my name is Barry. I’m a turkey picker.”

“Hello, Barry.”

“It’s been nearly 365 days since my last turkey pick. But I can practically smell the bird, see the dripp’n grizzle, and just about taste a piece of moist, dark meat. There’s no way I’m gonna be able to stop myself from ripping off the skin before they serve this thing next week and once, I start pick’n and eat’n and pick’n and eat’n...”

Most folks would agree there are two kinds of Thanksgiving eaters:

Those who will sit and eat like there’s no tomorrow and tomorrow they’ll eat like there’s no Saturday. This will continue until they run out of days of the week or cranberry stuffing.

The other Thanksgiving eaters will dabble on nothing more than a single serving, but go hog-wild the day after. They are what is commonly known in the trade as leftover mulchers.

Then there are the eaters like myself, for who the Thanksgiving tradition doesn’t just mean parades and pigskin but pick’n. Lots of pick’n. A little off the leg, a bit from the breast, a tear out of the thigh.

Worry about next-day leftovers? I won’t even wait for the other guests to take a seat in the dining room. By the time they decide on white or dark meat, I’ve already picked and pecked at half the bird.

Now I don’t pick at all the food. That would be disgusting.

I just go after the turkey. It began as a time-honored tradition at my in-laws’, where the spirit was warm, the feast bountiful and the turkey was always ripe for pick’n.

While the rest of the family watched football, my mother-in-law, the enabler, allowed me to pick away. We call it the initial taste. But what started more than 40 years ago as an innocent nibble on the skin has grown into a pretty embarrassing and grotesque obsession.

If not stopped, I’ll pick away at the helpless Butterball until there’s nothing left but the wishbone.

Why, you ask?

I chalk up my compulsive habit of pre-meal pick’n to a fear of being birdless on Thanksgiving. Unless I devour early, instead of waiting for everyone else to be served, I might miss out on turkey.

This is a result of my own family’s holiday tradition. Which is that we had no holiday tradition.

While my wife’s family reminded me of the Waltons, mine resembled the Costanza clan. Only louder.

Growing up, we didn’t sit at home eating turkey on Thanksgiving. Nor did we fill our plates and stomachs with a spread of homemade stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, rolls, three kinds of salads and enough freshly baked pies to fill a bakery.

Like most of my Jewish friends in Brooklyn, we went around the corner to Hong’s for wonton soup, fried rice, and chicken chow mein.

Instead of homemade rolls we had Hong’s Chinese noodles. For dessert, vanilla ice cream with a stale fortune cookie. Homemade in our house meant reheating leftovers at home.

It never occurred to us to have turkey, unless we wanted one of those Swanson TV dinners. You want dessert? Go to Waldbaum’s and pick up an Entenmann’s.

Decades later, I’m a 64-year-old turkey picker.

But I’m not alone.

Plenty of us spent Thanksgiving at Hong’s, where the combination plate wasn’t turkey with all the fixings but General Tso and the egg roll trimmings.

Some advice on Thanksgiving. Take a close look at your bird. Check if it seems a bit light on one side and has a picked-and-plucked look.

Then see if anyone is trying to lick the evidence off their fingers.

Be supportive. Hand them a wing. And a napkin.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Barry Lewis is a longtime journalist and author who lives with his wife Bonnie in the Town of Neversink. He can be reached at      barrylewisscdemocrat@gmail.com.