I'm told my long-held belief that turkey contains a sleep-inducing chemical that puts you into a semi-coma after even the slightest exposure may, in fact, be something of an old wives' tales. If old wives sat around making up fabulous stories about chemical compounds.
I, for one, have decided to reject this fact of science in favor of what I'd like to believe, which is turkey makes you fall asleep, and that pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream is the antidote, but it takes a while to kick in. Besides, rejecting science in favor of what you want to be the case seems very on brand these days.
And since I'm rejecting science in favor of completely wild and unsubstantiated rumor, I have another theory that has absolutely no basis in fact but that I'm going to share anyway. Again, very on brand. At least I'm not posting it on Facebook.
Anyway, I'm convinced that not only does turkey make you fall asleep, it also makes strange, disconnected ideas pop into your head. And share them with others. This is how great wisdom is passed on. And how family fights at Thanksgiving start.
It helps if you can make mental notes of some of these "interesting" thoughts. I would, but I've been told my mental pencil isn't as sharp as it used to be. I know this to be untrue, mostly because it was never that sharp in the first place.
But I do seem to recall that, in those moments when I roused myself from the I'm-convinced-chemically-induced-though-apparently-there-is-no-science-to-back-it-up-but-still-turkey-coma, I've had these thoughts:
• I'm not sure every song on Willie Nelson's "The Red-Headed Stranger" album is some version of "The Tennessee Waltz" or "Red River Valley." But most of them are. And yes, this is what you get when you binge-watch "Yellowstone." That and a suspicion that real cowboys don't talk like a version of Western-themed greeting cards.
• Why is it when football coaches recruit players, they say they'll be part of a "family" more than a team. But when these coaches leave, they say they're doing it for their "family." Which family? The one they induced to come play for them that they're now abandoning, or the one they're taking from their home, schools and friends and dragging hundreds of miles across the country so they can never see them because they work 100 hours a week?
• I've read that, so far this year, consumers are spending more money, even after adjusting for inflation, than they've spent in quite some time. Also, I've read that consumer confidence (whatever that is) is at a significant low. So, we're buying a lot of stuff but we don't think we are? Or that we should? Or we're buying it now because we don't think it's going to be there in the future (mostly because we bought it, but ... you know)?
• Basically our economy appears to have turned into my mother, who used to say things like, "everything is terrible, but today is nice, isn't it?" That and, "Sorry I woke you, but I wanted to ask if the turkey was too dry this year. I thought it might be too dry. And here's some pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream."
• During the long periods between the seconds of football actually being shown, I saw a commercial in which someone gave a loved one (assuming here) a gift-wrapped chainsaw for Christmas. And I gotta say, if you take it out of the box, there is no way to gift-wrap a chainsaw that leaves any mystery. A very specific shape. Why bother? Just give them the chainsaw, point them toward the back yard and hope they don't cut off anything they didn't mean to cut off.
• And, not to beat a dead horse, but our stop lights only have three colors: green, yellow and red. Yet, for some reason lots of folks seem to believe they also have orange. Green is for go, red is for stop, yellow is for slow down and orange is for, "Yeah, I'm running a red light, but it was yellow when I sped up and besides, the folks with the green light can't get off the line faster than I can get through the intersection."
Body shops make a living off people who believe in the orange light.
Lots of other odd thoughts, which I believe were turkey driven. But they'll just have to wait. After all, Christmas is right around the corner!