Ever Done The Flip Side of Breakfast?

Come on, fess up! I refuse to believe that I’m the only one who does this! Please tell me that, at least you’ve tried it. Ever since I had even a few baby teeth and could chew, I have maintained that eating toast upside down is the only way to go.

This, of course, is based on actual scientific data about which I knew nothing when I first developed my theory at age five. I choose to think of it as highly intelligent that I gathered all this anecdotal-experiential evidence to uphold my theory that eating one’s toast upside down was indeed the best way to really taste it. (My sisters and parents would vehemently disagree!) But remember that science can rationalize this most unusual behaviour.

What kid doesn’t love toast piled high with peanut butter and jam slopped on right to the ceiling? And what about the liquid honey from that neat bear dispenser? Old Colony Maple Syrup was the best! Don’t forget that lemon butter you could pour! I had all of it several times a day. And, having the sweet tooth that I had, I soon discovered that when I turned it over and ate it upside down, I’d get that sensational sugar hit directly and immediately upon contact with my tongue. Wow! What a hit it was! Everyone thought I was some crazy kid, telling me to stop. ("Mom! She’s doin’ that weird thing with the toast again!") But I held on tightly to my conviction.

Now we all had very long hair done in braids back then and some of us still have those beautiful locks in an old Eaton’s bag at my mom’s. Unfortunately, for little girls who ate toast upside down, this was not even a remote possibility. Seemingly, with every piece of toast I ate, there were globs of sticky gunk that dripped down, adhering to every part of my hair that was in its trajectory! And now for the "flip side" of all of this!

Horrified and embarrassed, my mom took me to a barber; he set me on the booster seat, and hacked off those braids in one fell swoop with what I imagined to be a rusty old ax! My turn to be horrified! And at a place where BOYS in my class got their brush cuts!

But hold on! It still makes sense to me. Those diagrams of where all the different taste glands of the tongue are situated explain it perfectly. At the front of the tongue are the taste buds that act as receptors for sweet tastes, and match up exactly with where all that sugar-glue makes contact WHEN we do the flip side of toast! There you go my sweet sisters! What a remarkable theorist for a five-year-old eh?!!

I implore you to try it just once and you’ll never eat it the "correct" way ever again!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put a piece of my favourite bread in the toaster, right after I put my hair up!


Mother of Invention, hair in a ponytail, anticipating the sweet sensation of my childhood!