“Will you cut the crust off?”
This is what my daughter asks for as she and I lay in her bed discussing what I’ll pack in her lunch for the day… a ham and cheese sandwich minus the crust. Isn’t that what we all want sometimes though? Life with no crust.
Parents do this all the time; it’s like a key to childhood, a rite of passage, taking the extra time to cut off the crust of a child’s sandwich. This tiny gesture, it’s like making a sandwich with extra love packed inside, making it easier to eat and yet, when you remove the crust, the sandwich appears so much smaller in size, more compact somehow. Which made me wonder, just what did I remove?
According to a German study, when bread is baked, there is a chemical reaction that occurs in the dough that places more antioxidants in the crust. It also contains more fiber than the softer middle part which gives you added benefits to prevent colon cancer. So, perhaps my act of love isn’t providing her with any medical favors, but nowhere in that study does it state how much crust one person would have to consume to make a marked difference.
If life were a sandwich and all the rough moments were your crust: all the meetings that you had to attend, the errands you had to run, or the older kids who tore up your hat and stole your shoes that you had to endure at day camp. All of these little crusty moments give you building blocks to character, make you strong, and help you fight off the bigger things when they pop up. With the crust on, your day seems bigger than it really is and just because there are benefits to eating the crust, sometimes you have to know when to have the “crust cut off”.
There are times when I make her a sandwich and she eats the whole thing, crust and all, but I guess she knew today needed to be a “no crust” day and, this morning, I cut off all the crusts and packed a few kit kat bars for extra measure. There are days when I go to work and I don’t have a single meeting scheduled, making it easier to get other stuff done, kinda like having a day with the crust cut off.
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