Toast on a Plate
For fifteen years I ate my toast standing over the kitchen sink.
The toaster went at ten past seven. I buttered the two slices in my hand and ate them leaning over the sink, so the crumbs landed in the sink and not on the floor, with one eye on the clock on the oven. No plate, so no plate to wash. I rinsed the knife, stood it in the drying rack and went to work.
There's nothing wrong with eating standing up. A lot of good food gets eaten that way, at parties, and at the fridge at midnight. I told myself it saved time. It didn't, much. I think standing felt like I was already on my way to the office, and sitting down would have meant admitting I had five minutes.
One Saturday last month I took the bus into town and paid fourteen dollars to sit down with toast. It was sourdough with a bit of salt on top. Someone carried it over on a plate, and there was a chair, and I stayed in the chair for most of an hour. Every table in the place had somebody at it, sitting down with eggs or toast, the kind of thing most of us could make at home. I went home thinking it was the best breakfast I'd had all year.
It caught up with me the Tuesday after. Ten past seven, over the sink, butter on my thumb, one eye on the oven clock. I thought about the fourteen dollars, and all those people at all those tables. We have toast at home. We have chairs.
I'd had toast most mornings of my life. I'd hardly ever had breakfast.
So I waited for Monday, the way you do with these things, and tried it for a week. Same bread, same butter, same ten past seven. A plate, and a chair at the kitchen table, with the bills pushed to one end.
On Monday I didn't know what to do with my hands. I kept wanting to get up and do something, and there was nothing to do except eat the toast, which I was already doing.
On Wednesday I looked out of the kitchen window instead of at the clock. The cat from next door was on the shed roof. I watched it for a whole slice before I saw it was asleep.
By Friday it was just breakfast. I didn't turn into a morning person. I ate two pieces of toast sitting down, then I went to work, and I wasn't late, which was the reason I'd always given for standing up.
So that was what the fourteen dollars had paid for. Not the sourdough, and not the salt. The toast never needed to be better. It needed a plate and a chair.
Try this. Tomorrow, put your toast on a plate and sit down with it. Same bread, and five minutes. Nothing to buy. If the morning only has two minutes in it, two will do.
The plate takes nine seconds to wash. I timed it, which I gather misses the point. Most mornings now there's a plate in the drying rack, next to the knife.