A large moustached guy (who looked a bit like Dr. Phil) had given my mother a Thanksgiving turkey. It was in a plastic container...the kind that has two parts, an opaque bottom tray and a translucent plastic bubble on top. I took it and put it in the kitchen. There was some kind of paper band around it which I took off and threw out.
This shifted briefly into a scene about someone getting an answering machine as a gift, and pretending to like it, but then wanting to return it after they went away.
The scene shifted back to being about the turkey. I had to dig out the slightly crumpled band from the trash to put it back on in order to return it.
Later, the Dr. Phil-looking guy was having lunch at a table, with the returned turkey sitting next to him. Somehow I was seated nearby and could overhear. In the plot as I understood it, my mother was an employee of his and wanted to get a gift for her family. He knew the size of my the oven we had, and was trying to help make sure we had a good Thanksgiving dinner. Though he knew our extended family was not poor, he was concerned about what was indicated by the return.
I had a bit of a detour after the lunch and was thinking about what to do. I'd met a friend and was talking to her about her studies (she's in nursing school ATM), and then saw the Dr. Phil guy coming down the street. At first I wanted us to walk the other way, but then I decided to confront him.
me: "Hey, I wanted to thank you for the turkey, that was thoughtful."
moustache man: "Well I hope you enjoy it and have a happy Thanksgiving."
me: "It was returned, and I know you know it was. I overheard. But you shouldn't worry, I'll get fed. What you have to understand about my mother is that she tries to optimize things, from a certain... uninformed point of view... she..."
moustache man: "Yes, well it's about the framework one uses. If you don't have any spirituality, then you're just going to optimize based on human inertia. But if you went and asked the Mormons, they'd go at it another way..."
I was a bit aggravated that he'd interrupted me. I didn't have a chance to inject more defense.