Is Anyone Good at Buttering Toast?

or am I…just not cut out to be a person…?

Photo by Seriously Low Carb on Unsplash

As soon as the toast comes out of the toaster, I pounce on it. There is no time — or heat — to lose.

This might sound a tad dramatic, but once you consider the fact that this toast-pouncing takes place on a freezing October morning in the UK, you might feel a bit more sympathetic to my cause.

After 30 seconds or more, the toast — after sacrificing its flicker of heat to warm up our cold, soulless world — gives out the gentle sigh of an elderly woman who dies in the 5th episode of a period drama, after having only the slightest cough in the first episode.

Needless to say, I am devastated.

The butter on my knife looks at me reproachfully. It had left its home (the fridge) in hopes of a warmer, more welcoming world. It was ready to melt for the sake of another, to unite with an another foodstuff in the ties of holy gastronomy, until breakfast do them part.

Yet here the butter was, stuck to the toast, but conspicuously still a solid.

This, is what I believe we call in modern terms, disillusionment.

I look away as I try to do my best to salvage the situation. The painful scraping of the butter on the toast, crumbs are being scattered, whilst…