Thursday, September 17, 2009

Triangles and circles and squares, oh my

Last night as I was making Wil's lunch for school today, I found myself once again cutting the sandwich into triangles. Wil loves triangles* so this is partly a tactic aimed at encouraging him to eat his sandwich. But  there's a much deeper story here too.

One of my childhood memories is of eating sandwiches cut on the diagonal at my grandparents' house. At home, they were always cut in half top to bottom into rectangles, but Grandma and Grandpa always cut on the diagonal. It's funny how these things stick with us, but I always liked that. And I never cut my own sandwiches that way - it was something special.

Now I find myself cutting sandwiches for the boys and for Chris on the diagonal all the time. So when I did it last night, I stopped to think about why I do it. I think it has to do with rectangle sandwiches being ordinary everyday in my mind and triangles having that special bit of love in them. I guess sending Wil to school and Chris to work with triangle sandwiches is my way of sending them with a little love in their lunches. Hokey, but I think that's it.

* Part of why Wil really likes triangles is because he participated in a psychology study over the summer. It was a week long sleep study, plus a lab visit where they played games with him. One of the games involved a play house. A character would knock on the door and he had to decide if he wanted to open it. Mr. Triangle would give a Hershey's Kiss, Mr. Square would take one away, and Wil didn't know who was knocking each time. The point was to see if he would stop playing because he had enough rather than risk losing another.

2 comments:

  1. When I was a kid, my mom used to cut sandwiches on the diagonal both ways, making a big X. It gave us kid-sized (and triangular!) pieces to munch on, and made it easy to eat plenty of sandwich without having eat any crust, which both my sister and I hated.

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  2. I actually do that with Wil's sandwiches and give half to Sam, so I make 1 for both. Wil likes crusts, especially crunchy ones. Sam likes food. And I always toast the bread because it's easier to chew and they like it that way. Heck, I prefer my bread toasted, too!

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