When my Uncle Sammy was a boy he was a real good eater. Every day, my grandma would send Sammy off to school with two sandwiches, and he would always come home with an empty lunch box.1
Now when Sammy began first grade, sandwiches were made from double loaf bread—each slice was twice as wide as the slices of bread we have today. When my grandma made Sammy’s sandwiches, she would take a slice of that double loaf bread, put the filling on, and then fold the bread over for sandwich one. She would then take a second slice of double loaf bread, put the filling on, and fold it over—sandwich two.
It was during Sammy’s first year of school that single loaf bread, like what we have today, became more popular than double loaf bread. The first day my grandma made Sammy’s sandwiches with single loaf bread, she took a slice of bread, put the filling on, and then put a second slice on top for sandwich one. Another slice of bread, filling, a second slice of bread—sandwich two.
When Sammy came home from school that afternoon, my grandma opened his lunch box and she found two sandwiches. He hadn’t eaten as much as a single bite out of either one. My grandma looked at him, “Sammy, do you feel okay? Are you sick? Weren’t you hungry? You didn’t eat your sandwiches.”
Sammy looked at his mama, and tears ran down his cheeks, “Oh, Mama, I’m hungry. I’m just as hungry as I can be, but I couldn’t eat either one of those sandwiches. They’ve got something wrong with them. Neither one of them has a place to start.”
First you need to know that my Uncle Sammy grew up to become an engineer for a nationwide company. Yep, he grew up to be a troubleshooter!
In the telling of this story, I use my hands as substitutes for the slices of bread, showing how the different sandwiches were constructed. I know using a gesture will call attention to specific parts of a story, and in this one I want to be sure my listeners picture the different sizes of bread used to create the different sandwiches. Without that information solidly pictured, the ending will not make any sense. For years, I thought all my listeners pictured Sammy unable to eat the second set of sandwiches because he could not force himself to bite through the crust, but comments from a recent audience let me know that some listeners see the situation as Sammy viewing the first type of sandwich like a hot dog bun so he could start on an end while holding the section with no crust. Hmm, once again, I’m reminded that when a story is told each listener imagines it anew and creates his or her own version of the tale. Whether my listeners see him as unable to bite through crust or unable to find an end to use as a starting place, the story still works.
When I was growing up I never heard this story. Why? It never came up. Then, several of us were visiting my parents. My sister was making sandwiches for the nieces and nephews. When she set a sandwich down in front of one niece (I no longer remember which one, or I would tell you!), the child looked stricken. My father noticed, and commented, “She’s like Sammy.” My sister immediately picked up the sandwich, cut off the crust, and returned the sandwich to the now happy child. I stood there flabbergasted, completely unable to make the connection between his comment and her actions.
So, I asked, “How does ‘she’s like Sammy’ mean cut off the crust?”
Now my father and sister were puzzled, “You never heard that story?”
And that’s how the story ended up being told to me.
Family stories! They exist, but in my family (and I suspect in many families) the stories are not told every time folks get together. Instead, they come up in the context of specific situations that bring them to mind. Even then they are not told full out, but only referred to because the family thinks everybody already knows. Fortunately, curiosity and confusion led me to ask, and voila! A story!