I know considerably more about the Marvel Cinematic Universe than a woman my age really should. On the other hand, I now completely understand Sheldon and Leonard spending hours debating whether anyone other than Thor (and Steve Rogers) could conceivably pick up his hammer. These are important questions once you have enough useless information stored in your brain—and enough time on your hands.
As a newly-minted widow with no one beside me to discuss “whodunit” during every procedural show, I have been watching a LOT of understandably unromantic television. Somewhere along the way I created a busy little virtual universe of “company” all my own.
The Avengers live in it. So do Jack Reacher, Sherlock Holmes, Shawn Spencer, the gang from The Big Bang Theory, The Punisher, and Harry Potter, among many others. I am currently working out whether the Immortal Iron Fist could punch a Dementor, or positing that Frank Castle would have outmaneuvered Ellen Ripley and saved the Marines on the Nostromo. Change my mind!
But if Danny Rand could get his hands on some Ant-Man Pym particles, theoretically he could make a Dementor veeeery, very small. Punching it would diminish its ability to suck the joy out of life and reduce its effects to something more akin to mild seasonal depression.
I often muse that all this information might someday save the world. Perhaps aliens arrive and scientists try communicating with them with radio waves and prime numbers, only to discover the spacecraft repeatedly banging itself against the International Space Station. Fortunately, NASA would realize there’s a loony lady in Texas who has functional knowledge of space-time and cardinals. “Deflect the spacecraft 32 degrees aft,” I would tell them. “It’s fighting its reflection.” The banging would stop and humanity would be saved. You’re welcome.
But, before anyone starts recommending actual grief therapy, consider this: Thanksgiving is coming. And it’s an election year. Which means sometime between the blessing and the pumpkin pie, Uncle Pot-stirrer is going to point at someone with his fork and say: “You know what’s really wrong with this country…”
Dear Readers, I have been training for this for years. I have watched Elementary four times, Timeless three times, The Andy Griffith Show and The Big Bang Theory often enough that I probably qualify for Mayberry residency and an honorary degree from CalTech. I have accumulated historical footnotes, scientific curiosities, fictional trivia, and completely useless facts that are, at any given moment, all open mental tabs.
But perhaps I’ve been preparing for a more plausible emergency—Thanksgiving dinner. So, in the spirit of familial harmony and getting through dessert without anyone storming out of the house, I offer the Poppy’s Thanksgiving Diversion Starter Kit.
When Uncle Pot-Stirrer starts explaining what’s wrong with America, ask him if he knows why the Hindenburg actually crashed. If someone attempts a rebuttal, immediately inquire whether Harry Houdini might have visited (and escaped) Chicago’s Murder Castle in 1893.
If someone says, “Well, actually—,” deploy hummingbirds. Their finger bones are shorter than their arm bones, which is how they can fly backwards. Still not working? “Do you think Wilson ‘Kingpin’ Fisk would qualify for Dexter Morgan’s code?” ought to buy you 20 minutes. And if your family is anything like mine, there will be at least one teenager at the table capable of supplying emergency backup material. “Jack! Random TikTok challenge — GO!”
The truth is, maybe that’s part of why I keep returning to the same television shows in the first place and have recently added morally questionable superheroes. They are the comfort food of television. I know these people, their peculiarities, who’s going to annoy whom, and how the arguments end. And honestly, I can totally relate to Frank Castle missing his wife so much but, unfortunately, there’s no arsenal to avenge cardiac events. Perhaps Tony Stark could come up with something.
Come to think of it, all those characters sound an awful lot like my Thanksgiving table. Every year we gather the same recurring cast of characters. Somebody tells the same story, brings the same casserole, and inevitably starts the debate everyone knew was coming. We’ve seen this episode before and we come back anyway because these are our people. Maybe we don’t have to settle every argument, correct every opinion, or defend every position over mashed potatoes. There is an entire fascinating universe available to us, full of black holes, squirrels, Hogwarts, superheroes, and a million other things we haven’t learned yet.
For one afternoon, we could talk about literally any of them. And should things become truly desperate, I have 12 seasons of Frasier, several pies, Star Wars crossovers, and enough completely useless information to keep everyone distracted until Christmas. If that doesn’t work, eventually something will fly into a window and I’ll know exactly what to do.