September 28, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Slicing a sandwich is such an easy thing, routine, quickly forgotten, or is it?

We all have our habits, instilled by family, by culture, by individual preference, even a bit of the obsessive.

So for me, however odd or silly or both, I avoid a sandwich that is not cut. And not cut on the diagonal. Just straight down the middle, bread or roll. Never crushed in the process. It tastes better that way, like having a swiss cheese on rye with the swiss ultra-thin. It’s different than slab cheese.

And when you add toppings, choice of breads, rolls, lettuce, tomato or not, the ballgame takes on more preferences, even greater demands than the rules in English football.

The sandwich thing is a metaphor for any of our habits/desires/preferences. Does one stow water glasses upright or upside down? Do you have to sleep on the right or the left? Do you leave your shoes at the door?

What “rules” do you follow on trips or visits to someone? Does your sister in law cut the ends off white bread sandwiches as your grandmother did? Do you chafe at the dictum, “When in Rome … ?”

Habits are comfort blankets, woven from childhood. We may leave some of them behind (once knew a great woman who liked to eat sticks of butter as a young kid), but others stay with us through thick and then. And why not in this crazy world?

Off to make a breakfast sandwich; hold the ketchup, pass the knife.

The writer is a retired newspaperman. guntherart12@gmail.com

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