Today, my wife sent me to the Supermarket for 60% whole wheat bread. You can imagine my confusion when I showed up in the bread aisle and all the loaves were reading 100%.
I kindly asked the bread lady, “Do 60% whole wheat bread loaves exist or is my wife just yanking my chain?”
“Oh they exist alright,” she assured me, “but we don’t carry them anymore… they’re kind of going the way of the unicorn.”
“That bad eh?” I said not really understanding her reference.
“Besides,” she went on, “why would you want 60% of something when you can have it all? 100 is better than 60!”
“Not always,” I disagreed. “I don’t really know a lot about the whole bread game, but I know a thing or two about broken arms.”
“What are you on about?” my red-apron wearing nemesis asked me.
“Well what if I’m on a swing?” I asked her, “and I fall off and break my arm? I’d rather break 60% of my arm than 100% of my arm.”
“You’re a grown man, what are you doing on a swing?” she snarled.
“Or what if I’m climbing a mountain?” I babbled. “What if I’m climbing a mountain, and I’m desperate to get to the top? Would I rather have 60% of the climb left or the whole thing?”
“I’m starting to hope you fall off this mountain,” she quipped, “and break your arm on the way down. Now do you want my help or not, because I’m a very busy bread lady and I have some slicing to do.”
OK, maybe she didn’t call herself ‘bread lady’, but that just fits the story nicely, and I don’t actually know her name. Although her sentence must have been something different altogether, because she wouldn’t have said ‘I’m a very busy Debbie’ but it was something like that… something in that vein.
Finally, this hair netted breadstress said something useful: “you look like a man who’s into idiotic solutions, why don’t I cut the loaf for you… you can take 60% of the 100% loaf home to your wife.”
“Not bad Solomon,” I complimented her, “but I’m King David, my solution rules the day!”
You should have seen my wife’s face when I came home and she realized what I had done.
You see, my wife really likes 60% whole wheat bread, and she must know that it’s rare stuff, because her exact instructions were, “if you find any, buy it all up, bring home ten loaves of it!” For a fleeting moment, this seemed like an impossible task because like the ‘Red Apron’ said, 60% bread is mythological.
But that’s when I remembered my old friend math: if my wife wanted 10 loaves (each at 60%), then she was really asking for 600% whole wheat bread. With the help of a high school shopping cart jockey, I was able to deduce that 600 divided by 100 was actually 6! I could get my wife the exact amount of whole wheat she required, and I could do it in just six 100 % loaves.
“And you actually thought that this made sense?” my incredulous wife asked me.
“Big time savings,” I told her. “I saved on 4 loaves, and do you know how I spent my bonus money?”
“Tell me,” she really didn’t want to know.
“I went to Déjà vu Discs, I bought a Best of the 60’s compilation… in honour of the bread… it was really my day.”
“Maybe you should have bought a Best of the 80’s and subtracted twenty of the tracks… it would have worked out to the same thing.”
“Sometimes, I think you only use 60% of your brain,” I informed her.
Turns out the joke’s on me. Who knew that 60% of your brain was such a good number.
By: Alex Headley and his life experiences. 60% of this story is actually true. Can you spot any fabrications?
