It’s a good thing there are some unbelievable stories of (aberrant) human behavior reported over the holiday to wake you from the tryptophan stupor of the Thanks Giving turkey.

It is popular folk lore that it is the tryptophan in turkey that makes you so soporific after Thanks Giving dinner - even to the point where Jerry, in an episode of Seinfeld was trying to drug Celia with turkey so that he could play with her toy collection (she had a G.I.Joe, he only ever had an Army Pete).

Though tryptophan is an interesting compound that converts to first serotonin (which should make you happy and mellow and better able to deal with the family as this is the chemical that is enhanced by the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro), then to melatonin - which controls your sleep wake cycle, there is actually no more tryptophan in turkey than many other meats and poultries.

No, it’s the booze and the carbohydrates - and perhaps the relatives, that do it to you. But that’s not my point.

My point is the couple of stories of, apparently everyday human behavior reported over the holiday, but which demonstrate such dysfunction that it woke me from my doze and prompts me to ask, “what the hell has happened to our society?”

At a Wal Mart on Long Island, the doors were broken and an employee was trampled to death in the stampede of happy shoppers - 2000 of them - who had started to congregate at 9 pm on Thanks Giving day but were there for “black Friday” shopping.

I cannot help but ask, how can anybody be so crazed about shopping/getting a bargain? Have we descended to the behavior of base animals - so infatuated with “stuff” that we act like this?

The other story that makes me question just what is up in our society, is the actions of Missouri mother, Lori Drew, and her daughter Sarah. They didn’t like Megan, the girl next door so they made up a fictitious character (Josh Evans) who sent Megan flirtatious messages on My Space. Then they sent her another one dumping her, with Josh telling her “the world would be a better place without you”. Upon which Megan promptly hanged herself with a belt in her bedroom.

What kind of a warped, vindictive, wack job is Lori Drew - not to mention what kind of a mother? And what have we come to when a teenager will hang herself in response to a message on Face Book from someone she has never met?

It might be better if we did all just stay asleep.

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