I don’t do Twitter. As of this writing, there are over 68 million Twitter users just in the United States, and I don’t care what any of them have to say. You could say there are 68 million reasons I don’t do Twitter.

Nonetheless, I still get plenty of exposure to a multitude of mindless tweets through the news. In fact, if we knew nothing else about our nation’s bloviating buffoon-in-chief, we would know he is a blithering idiot just from his daily tweets that are shared with the world every day in the news.

I like to stay informed about world events, so I read the news, and I usually pay attention only to ‘real’ news. By real news I mean hard news, news about issues that matter, issues that affect our lives in real ways.

I recently came across a news story that I normally would have ignored. It wasn’t real news. It was a story about a guy who had used twitter to profess his preference for diagonally sliced toast. Yes, this is apparently newsworthy! It must have been a slow news day, because I actually read on. I normally pass on content like this.

The guy posted pictures of three ways to slice toast, and asked for other Twitter users’ opinions about their preferences. Like you have to ask.

The first option showed his own preference, a diagonal slice, resulting in two toast triangles. Then there was a vertical slice, and finally a horizontal slice. Each of those cuts resulted in rectangles with slightly different proportions. There is no practical difference in any of the resulting shapes.

It all seemed fairly innocuous, even boring, but a tweet storm ensued as countless Twitiots argued over which was the proper method for slicing toast. Seriously, toast slicing. Big controversy. You’d think the planet had no real problems.

How can it matter to someone else how, or even if, I slice my toast?

I recalled an episode of an old TV sitcom that seemed relevant. Two characters were at odds over each other’s method for performing an almost universal, everyday task. One man put on a sock and a shoe, and a sock and a shoe. The other character was perplexed by that, and let him know how outlandish his method was. The proper way, he asserted, was to put on a sock and a sock, then a shoe and a shoe. They each expressed very good reasons for the way they did it.

Who cares? It makes no difference to me how you dress. Why should it matter to you how I dress?
Perhaps I was intrigued to read on because of a bread-related incident that happened to me many years ago. I had made lunch for a girlfriend, and I was severely chastised when I served her a sandwich that I had cut in half vertically. I knew it was ‘unconventional’ when I cut it. I did it anyway, just to be different.

My girlfriend threw a fit! She almost didn’t even eat it. “How am I supposed to eat this? It’s mutilated!” She eventually overcame her initial horror and ate it, but the look on her face was that of a child being forced to eat broccoli.

I took time out of my busy schedule, in the middle of the day, to fix her a sandwich and serve it to her on a plate with chips, a napkin, and her favorite beverage. It was a beautiful presentation, and she didn’t like the way the sandwich was cut.

That was over thirty years ago and she’s probably still steaming.

That of course was well before cell phones, social media, and the lame practice of posting pictures of meals on Facebook pages. It was, however, a meal that would have been worthy of such immortalization.

I envision her on her death-bed saying, “I had a pretty good life…except for that sandwich.” That would be a post-worthy image.

So thank you Twitter for reminding me that I used to have a relationship with that psycho, and also for the reminder that there are many more nut jobs just like her out there.

People can be violently passionate about insanely insignificant things.

There were reportedly thousands of responses to the triangular toast tweet. Several were published, and I was amazed at how ugly it got, with each person defending his own preference for bisecting bread. People were getting very nasty about each other’s half-pieces of toast. Unlike the sock and shoe incident, where the feuding parties each had excellent defenses, none of the toast respondents offered any valid reasoning for their preferences. Most were simply, “This is the proper way to slice toast, you’re an idiot.”

All this furor over slicing toast, and curiously, no mention was made about the type of bread that was used to make that toast, which is way more important than how it is sliced. (White and whole-wheat are the only acceptable choices, by the way, unless you happen to have a loaf of English muffin bread.)

Not that it really matters, and perhaps not surprisingly, a large majority of the people preferred toast triangles. Horizontally cut rectangles were a distant second, and the vertical cut, like my girlfriend’s sandwich, was largely dismissed as a joke.

It is interesting to note that the much-maligned vertical cut is the only one that results in two mirror-image halves. If you turn one piece over, they are nearly identical shapes. The horizontal and diagonal cuts both result in halves that are asymmetrical, no matter how you turn them. People are clueless.

I’ve seen people cut their hamburgers in half before eating them. I wonder how many of them can differentiate between diagonal, horizontal and vertical cuts on their burgers. That’s how silly it is.

But with all the name-calling, insults and culture-bashing, the most significant aspect of this controversy was totally overlooked—an aspect that rendered every single tweet pointless, and laid bare the stupidity of everyone who responded.

Simply stated, you don’t slice toast, you cut it.

Think about it. The raw material for toast—bread—is sliced. It is sliced perpendicular to the long axis of the loaf into…yes...slices. Most bread comes pre-sliced. When you make toast, you place a slice of that bread into the toaster and press down on the lever. The bread descends into the toasting chamber.

After a couple minutes, like magic, out pops a slice of toasted bread, known almost universally as toast. A piece of toast. A slice of toast.

Now, although there is no reason to do so, you may choose to cut that toast.

Cut, not slice. It was sliced before it was toasted. After toasting, it can be cut.

For those of you who think my argument is overly semantic, look at it this way. When you slice a bagel, you end up with two ‘O’s—the top and bottom halves. When you cut a bagel, you have two ‘C’s. One is backward—a mirror image, remember—but that is easily corrected if it bothers you. It’s going to bother someone.

Now try slicing a piece of toast the way you sliced that bagel. Most likely you made a mangled mess of the toast, and you may have even hurt yourself. If you did manage to slice it cleanly, you have two very thin slices that are toasted on only one side, and by now they are both cold.

The bagel is used for example only. I don’t know why anyone would want to slice or cut a bagel, let alone eat one. Personally, I’d rather choke down a dry old doughnut.

But why are people cutting their toast in the first place? When I make toast, I put butter on it, and eat it as a whole slice. There is no benefit to cutting it in half. None.

In fact, there are practical benefits—both ergonomic and culinary—to leaving it whole.

A whole piece of toast can be folded in half, with the butter, and maybe some jam if you like, on the inside. My Granny called it a suitcase sandwich. It’s not as messy to eat, and it’s easier to maneuver without the need to delicately handle it by the edges, where it is easy to fumble and drop it on the floor.

My dog is very motivated to observe the five-second rule, and if hits the floor, he will get to it before I do. Besides, chances are it will land jelly-side down, and there will be no fighting over it anyway
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Also, a folded piece of toast is the perfect shell for an egg taco. If you‘re one of those Twitter nuts, you can fold it diagonally if you like. Chopped up fried egg inside of a piece of toast is a real treat. Add a slice of bacon and you can die happy.

There is only one reason to cut toast. When I put gravy on my toast, I like it cut into little pieces first. Cut it diagonally. Cut it vertically. Cut it horizontally. It matters not, as long as I end up with a pile of bite-sized pieces that I can pour my gravy over. (Actually, a tic-tac-toe cut is optimal for this exquisite dish. That was not even an option with the troglodytes on Twitter.) A pile of toast pieces smothered in hot country gravy is an Epicurean delight. It is a life-changing experience.

Can a special case be made for French toast? Do you cut pancakes in half? Do you cut waffles in half? If you do, ask yourself, and honestly answer this question: Why?

The morons on Twitter were only concerned with how the toast is cut in half. All the thousands of tweets aside, it is pointless dispute.

So, what have we really learned from all this?

Number one: You can’t slice toast. Okay, you can, but slicing it is laborious and dangerous. You’d be surprised at the number of emergency room visits precipitated by bagel-slicing accidents. And slicing a bagel is child’s play compared to slicing a piece of toast that began its life already sliced.

Number two: There are more than three ways to cut toast, but only one good reason. And that one good reason dictates the use of a method that was not even an option in the tweet wars. Cut your toast into little pieces for gravy, otherwise leave it whole.

Number three: Aren’t there more important things to tweet about?

There is probably not enough evidence here to condemn Twitter entirely. But I have seen nothing demonstrating its value in communicating important information. A user’s ill-informed opinion does not qualify as information. There are two opinions that matter to me: my own, and, I am married…so…

Again, I am not a Twitter user, so I only see the tweets that end up in the media, but you’d think there would be an occasional post that demonstrated a bit of intelligence. All the evidence indicates there are 68 million Twitter users who may all be idiots.

If Twitter’s intent is to identify a large number of those cretins so they can someday round them all up and lock them safely away somewhere, I can support that venture. I will even donate money to the cause. Send me a tweet.

But if all Twitter is doing is providing a platform for millions of morons to post their banal comments and stupid opinions, then I just don’t get it.

If you’re a Twitter user, do yourself—and your followers— a favor and remember this fun fact before you tweet: the Latin root for the word “Twitter” is Twit.

Scott Wright © 2017

 

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