Sliced Bread Revolution

   I was driving in my car the other day, listening to the radio, and this ad came on for On-Star. It was one of those testimonial type adds where this customer was calling in to the On-Star control center to add minutes to her plan. After she raved on and on about how the system changed her life, she said, "I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!"

   I guess I must have been extra bored or something because I found myself thinking about the cliche of something being better than sliced bread. Is having your bread pre-sliced in the bag really that life-changing or revolutionary? I decided that maybe I needed to find out. After all, I've used that claim a time or two in my life, so maybe I need to know how authentically I feel about it. So I drove my car to the local grocery store and went to the bakery.

   I selected a very small loaf of fresh baked, clearly un-sliced bread. (I didn't want to have a lot of difficult bread left over in case the slicing proved to complicate my life too much.) When the bakery worker grabbed the loaf for me from the case, she asked over her shoulder, "You want that sliced, hon?" I proudly said, "No thank you -- I'm doing it myself!"

   I'm not sure if I detected a raise in her eyebrow or not, but there was definitely a shift in her hair net when I declined the slicing option and I felt super challenged to put this worn out cliche to the ultimate test. Would it change my life? Probably not. But I was about to find out.

   I'm most certainly not known for my skills in the kitchen -- unless you count my cleaning skills, which are actually legendary among family. And most of the time, I think my husband rather hopes I won't handle the knives, but I felt ready to take a chance. So I made my way over to my perfectly sanitized butcher block and pulled out the serrated bread knife. With my tiny loaf of sunflower bread, resting patiently on the cutting board, I slid the knife across the top with a gentle see-saw motion to create the first cut. 

   My first slice wasn't too bad, but as I moved my way down the loaf, each piece became more and more disfigured. I might have been squeezing the loaf a bit too hard with my stabilizing hand as I pushed the knife down with my other hand to create the cuts. And size consistency? Forget it. One of the slices I cut -- toward the middle -- actually wouldn't fit into the over-sized slots of my pop-up toaster! And even the couple pieces that did fit were so uneven that they must of been touching the heating elements in the toaster! As a result, there was a horrible smell of burnt bread overpowering my Fabreeze-fresh home! (Bummer...)

   There's no doubt that the bread was still quite delicious, and ultimately, the effort of slicing my own bread really didn't impact me as much as it sounded like the On-Star navigational system impacted the caller on their ad. But you know, pre-sliced bread is a great thing, and I do think, after doing my own research on the subject, it is a worthy cliche. It does indeed simply things, and you know, that can be a revolution of sorts. Anyway, I feel as if I can use this common phrase with a truer voice, and now that you've read my blog, I hope maybe you can, too.