Dear Mordechai,
Why do we like bagels so much?
Whole Wheat Poppy
Dear Poppy,
Because they’re round, and round food symbolizes mourning. Or something.
It doesn’t make sense, though. When we have a loaf of bread, no one wants to eat the ends. Sometimes I open up the bread in my house to make myself a sandwich, and the only two slices left are both ends. How is this possible? How many ends were in there? And do I really want to eat the end slice that everyone pushed out of the way numerous times to get at the whole rest of the loaf? But my point is that a bagel is basically all ends. There’s even extra end in the middle. Yet we love it. How is this better than sliced bread?
So my theory is that we like being able to look at a sandwich and tell what’s inside it based on what’s leaking out the middle. As opposed to prying it open, like the goyim do.
Dear Mordechai,
The local bagel shop has three sizes of coffee – large, extra large, and medium. Why is there no small?
Tough Choices
Dear Choices,
The medium is small. It’s 8 ounces. How small do you expect small to be? The thing is that they can’t actually label it “small,” because no one has ever ordered a small coffee. No one’s ever like, “I’m tired, but I’m not so tired. Yet I want to pay exorbitant prices for coffee. Can you just fill a schnapps cup for me?” No. They just order decaf.
No one is ordering four ounces of coffee. In fact, no one orders a half a cup of any drink, ever. Unless maybe it’s for their kids, because kids are likely to spill their drinks. Especially if those drinks are coffee. Or they’re bringing them home and drinking them in a room lined with mattresses.
And if someone does decide that 8 ounces is actually way more than they drink, the server can just say, “Well, drink some and save the rest for later. It comes with a cover.”
Because seriously, it’s the same amount of work to make any size cup of coffee, and the ingredients themselves are negligible. You’re paying for the paper cup, I think. In fact, it’s far more likely that people will order a much larger coffee than they need, because it’s like 5 cents more. Never mind that there’s no way to finish an extra large coffee before it gets cold, unless you’re willing to start it before it’s safe to drink, or you take off the top the second it’s ready and just gulp it down. It really depends on how much sleep you got the night before, or if you just stayed up all night and counted the springs in your mattress.
Have a question for “You’re Asking Me?” Sleep on it.