How To Cut A Bagel

It is all really unfortunate.
Brooklyn, New York - August 2006

One Friday morning, a couple of years ago I was in the kitchen at the job I had when I was living in San Francisco. Low-carb diets were still all the rage but, not to be deterred by a harmless little fad, the twice-weekly bagel days, which everyone in the company diet or not, looked forward to, continued. I was new there, only doing contract work, and didn't know too many people.

A couple of people walked in behind me, and I poured myself a cup of tea, walked over to the bagels, picked up the knife, grabbed one of the bagels with it, and sliced it half. Before I finished putting the veggie cream cheese on, I felt the other people staring at me, very interested in what I was doing. I turned around, and smiled.

One of the people there was Don, the director of my department. He's one of those tall over-caffeineated type-A sales-and-management type people who has a closet full of nothing but Hawaiian shirts so he can show up to work on each Friday in a different one. The sort of guy who takes spontaneous vacations to Florida to meet his kids at spring break, jumps on stage with the local bar band and belts out an inspiring rendition of "Margaritaville" that's better than the original, goes on to drink the college students there under the table, then retreats to his hotel room with all the women. He's the sort of guy I at the same time admire and hope never to become.

He and the others had been talking about business, about projects being late, when they came in and stopped talking. When I turned around, Don said, slowly like I had a very large, very ugly, very poisonous spider on my head, "How did you do that?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Do what?" One of the others, unable to speak, pointed at the bagel I had on my plate. Don grabbed my wrists.

"No cuts," he said, as a few more people filled in to see what the hubbub was about.

"Yeah, no cuts." the others nodded in disbelieving agreement, I was completely baffled.

Don went on to explain that he'd never seen anyone cut a bagel "that way," that the only reason they even leave a knife out on the counter was to give the bagel slicers that everyone else uses, and which I didn't even notice were there, a head start. "How'd you do it?"

"I'm a Jewish guy from New York. Thirty years of training." I was these people's hero, their idol. I could have controlled them. I could have told Don that I was in charge, and he needed to give more money or build a gold statue. Instead, I just cut all their bagels for them. All along, I figured that was a cute and charming, "Crazy, Flaky San Franciscan" thing. Really, how can you not know how to cut a bagel in half?

Yesterday was the going away breakfast for someone leaving her job here. Coffee, danish, bagels. I cut mine, and put cream cheese on it to nearly the same response from people looking on. So, it's not a San Francisco thing. Maybe it's me, maybe my family has some secret.

Here it is, to help save the world.

Equipment Needed:

• Bread knife (one)


• Bagel (one), the fresher the better


• Hands (two)

To Slice the Bagel:

1. Hold the knife in your favored hand and the bagel in the other almost as if you're about to throw it like a frisbee.


2. Carefully cut into the bagel with a firm but careful sawing motion, gradually moving your fingers and thumb out of the of the blade as you go, until you've cut about two thirds of the way through the bagel.


3. Using the knife handle, flip the knife and bagel over so that the cut end is now in the palm of your hand, and the blade of the knife is facing back in the direction it came from.


4. Cut the rest of the way through the bagel, then put down the knife.

Easy.

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It's a fact! Harold C. Bloom, an electrician from Brick Township, New Jersey holds the world record for tallest vertical stack of quarters, measuring over 117,000 miles, nearly half the distance to the moon. Valued at more than twenty-nine billion dollars, it is the only stack of quarters visible from space. Now, tell a friend.

Labels: bagel, it's a fact