There are days when I just don’t know why I married an engineer.
Oh, sure there’s that whole love thing
– but seriously. When a normal person (me) and an engineer
(Harry) marry, it can be an … adventure. Or at the very least, a
union between two people of completely different species.
There are days when I just don’t know why I married an engineer. Oh, sure there’s that whole love thing – but seriously. When a normal person (me) and an engineer (Harry) marry, it can be an … adventure. Or at the very least, a union between two people of completely different species.
Take sandwich making, for example. Yes, sandwich making. Just stay with me on this, OK? I take a couple pieces of bread, slap on some mayo, top it off with some meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato, plop it together, cut it in half and eat it. The entire process takes about two minutes.
It doesn’t work that way for an engineer.
For engineers, like Harry, sandwich making is a serious and time-consuming enterprise. I have heard urban legends of engineers who starved to death while trying to create the perfect mountain of roast beef and cheddar, but sadly didn’t get it right and thus, could not eat it because it wasn’t perfect. I would not be shocked to find that engineers have developed some sort of formula for sandwich making, like meat = cheese3 + mayonnaise (-lettuce and tomato).
Seriously. In our house, sandwich making is an art form – at least for Harry. First Harry has to examine the bread. The sizes must match up perfectly; otherwise the bread-to-bite ratio will be off. Seriously. Who knew there was a bread-to-bite ratio? Apparently, in engineer world there is such a thing. And it’s important.
Once the bread matching is complete, Harry can move on to the really difficult part of sandwich making – ensuring proper coverage and layering of condiments. Mayonnaise is the first condiment to be spread on the bread, unless your engineer isn’t Harry and is a renegade who enjoys the great taste of Miracle Whip. Not many of those mavericks truly exist, though. For the most part, they are a mayonnaise-loving species.
Of course, Harry can’t just slap some mayo on the bread and call it a day. No, a precise amount of mayonnaise is taken from the jar and repeatedly wiped across the bread. This is to ensure an even coverage on the entire slice that penetrates all the little holes that are in the bread. This process is repeated for each slice. It takes about a million years until the mayo is done to Harry’s liking.
Next, the mustard is chosen. The mustard must be flavor-matched to the cheese and meat selection – which explains why there are approximately 42 jars of mustard in our refrigerator. Once selected, the mustard is applied directly to the mayo-soaked bread.
Now comes the meat. Apparently it is very important to have properly sliced meat. The meat must always – and I mean always – be sliced thin to ensure that an engineer can achieve proper meat-to-cheese flavor. That is why you will never see an engineer in a grocery store buying a package of bologna. It’s not sliced thin enough – and also, I think they know what all the chemicals in bologna really are and that makes bologna really, really scary. Anyway, the meat is applied in thin pieces, until the pile is a perfect tower of carnivorous delight.
After that comes the cheese. The cheese is always chosen to enhance the meat. Turns out, they have complimentary flavors. Who knew? I usually just slap some cheddar on my sandwich no matter what the meat is and boom! It’s done. Anyway, once chosen, the cheese has to be cut into rectangles so that it can be balanced on the meat pile without any meat peeking through. Seriously. I can’t make this stuff up.
Anyway, next the lettuce is layered using the leafy portions of the lettuce only – because who wants a lumpy sandwich? That is topped with thin slices of tomato, which are slightly overlapped to ensure tomato flavor in each bite of sandwich. Thin slices of onion are applied in the same manner.
At this point, the sandwich is nearly complete. Now Harry will top the sandwich with the remaining bread so that all sides are aligned and cut the sandwich in half. This cannot be done willy-nilly. No, a sandwich must be cut into precise triangles of equal size. And no, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because triangles look kind of “mathy.”
And this is why I don’t let Harry make me a sandwich. My slapped-together creations are just fine with me. Of course, I am normal. Or at least, I like to think I am.
