Notes:

During a high school health class, the subject’s health teacher explained that she was in the kitchen with a friend. The friend was cooking a pot roast and before putting the pot roast in a pot she cut off both ends. The health teacher asked her friend why she cut off the ends and the friend responded “that’s just how my mom always did it” but the health teacher’s friend said that she would ask her mother.

A few days later the health teacher’s friend came back and told her mother cut off both ends because her mother (the friends grandmother) cut them off. The health teacher’s friend was able to ask her grandmother why she cut off the ends of the pot roast and the grandmother replied “because it wouldn’t fit in the pot!”

The health teacher explained to the subject and her class that the underlying meaning to the story was that sometimes there is no underlying story and the and that the reasons why people perform what may seem to be a ritual is completely logical.