While waiting for her pita last night, Pat stifled a yawn. Now this was right in the middle of a raucous party at a Greek restaurant.

I gave her a withering dirty look, and she tried to convince me that recent research indicates that yawning isn’t a sign of boredom, it’s a sign that your brain was hot.

I thought her husband was going to spray the table with his tea.

Of course the more she tried to convince us, the less we believed her.

I told her I was going to bust her on my blog.

Turns out, she did learn of research about a key to why people yawn.

But University at Albany psychology professor Gordon Gallup said, as people yawn, they cool off their brains. “Brains are like computers,” he said. “They only operate efficiently and effectively when they’re cool. And, therefore, there are some very intricate cooling mechanisms that serve to regulate the temperature of the brain.”

Here’s my hypothesis on why this research was done. He and his wife were doing the nasty dance and he yawned.

He: “Oh baby, it’s just that you got my brain so hot!”

She: “Prove it.”

Thus a research study was hatched.

We also talked a lot about belly dancing, so maybe that influenced Pat too.