Half a sandwich?

Perhaps I am too judgemental. However, a certain event that will trigger my ire is the job half done. For those of you with children this is an easy rant to understand. Did you clean your room junior? And despite their protests that their job was good enough you find that their performance is sub standard. Its a grinding war of attrition and like many frustrated parents before me I have been tempted to give up. After all, its not me that has to live in the swill. But then my better senses take hold and the fight continues and the job finally is done satisfactorily.

You can't help but wonder then how many parents that have gone before us have surrendered to the temptation of allowing junior to go through life at half measure. What would the implications be? I think I have the answer.

As a semi reformed fat guy who has to eat on the road alot I am compelled to dine often on sandwiches and similar delicacies. Worse yet, circumstances dictate that many times this cuisine must be eaten on the fly, often in a moving vehicle. So you can understand the importance of having an entree of this variety prepared in two clear and identifiable segments. In common parlance, cut in half. Now to the uninitiated you might think that this is a simple request. Take whatever cutting implement is readily at hand and divide the object of my culinary desire in to two more or less equal parts. And to show I am a reasonable person, anything up to the 70-30 split would be acceptable. Despite the simplicity of this concept I am confronted more and more by a phenomenon that complicates what should be a simple part of the day. On the go dining.

More often than not when I reach my mobile dining destination I will greedily unwrap the meal and hope to scarf it down before the radio chirps to life and summons me to the next assignment necessitating the temporary abandonment of the meal. As I go to separate the two halves there it is, a doughy umbilical binding what should be two specific hemispheres of delicatessen delight. Frustrated I pull to quickly dislodge its death grip only to have the roll shear at a bizarre angle exposing the once neatly contained entrails to the elements or worse spraying my uniform with condiments of gelatinous variety.

When I stop at one of my more regular dining destinations I try to make a point of asking that my bagel or sandwich be cut fully in two. Most often the clerk will look at me as if I am a raving lunatic. Yet with regularity despite my explicit requests, there is no parting of the way.

So when you next question your sanity as you get after your kids to get with the program remember that you are at least saving some poor bastard from wearing half his lunch. And with any luck you are preventing a poorly designed building or a half filled tooth. Whatever the outcome the world in some measure will probably be a less frustrating place.