Dear Editor,
I’m 67 years old—a stone-cold hard fact I sometimes can’t get my mind around. In a time, not so long ago, I was young. I took my youth for granted—it seemed endless. For one single day in my life, out of desperation I hung out at my local library and played Chess. The guy across from me seemed old and used up—a victim of time. I sat there ignoring the Chess game and sat and watched my withered opponent. I got up the nerve to ask his age. I’m 24! Ancient I thought. I was 14 and for one day only out of place and time. I ended up losing the Chess game and never willingly returned to a library and abandoned the pretentious game of Chess for Checkers.
In my youth, I watched my mom watching Coronation Street on CBC. I was confused about what exactly she enjoyed about some working-class Brits drinking at their local and forever folding laundry. I was profoundly confused about the British eating habits when it came to breakfast—tea and cold toast. The Brits would sit at their breakfast table and there it would be—cold toast standing wedged in a metal toast holder stone cold as ice. In Canada, toast is served warm cause that’s how come butter melts and deliciously soaks into burnt bread—a soggy delicious mess, yum!
Over the years, this whole notion of cold British toast would haunt me—like a white whale, I swear! Until it dawned on me in my 67th year that British ate their toast cold because it’s crispier than toast served warm and soggy. Simple and easy like my lost youth.
Paul ( Barkley ) Tedesco, Strathroy
