Columnists
Salt: 2B or not 2B
Now that we’re getting into oatmeal season, I am reminded of a domestic experience I had at the start of last year’s season that shook me up.
I developed an ‘oatmeal for the winter’ approach to breakfast a few years ago. And I’m not afraid to a admit that I like a dash of salt with my porridge. The maker’s recipe lists salt as optional, but I consider it mandatory: it cleanses the the nostrils, or something.
My wife and I for some reason maintain three working salt and pepper sets (don’t ask why). And things evolved in such a way that my wife took on the responsibility for emptying and filling Sets 1 and 2, while I took on the job of monitoring Set 3.
Set 3, vessel A, was my ‘go to’ equipment for my oatmeal salt, but when it ran dry I naturally went on to use sets 1 and 2 rather than refilling set 3. Labour deferred is labour saved, right?
But it didn’t follow that I would automatically reach for vessel 1A or 2A, because for the 40 years of our marriage, we had adopted different views on which is the ‘correct’ shaker for salt and which is the ‘proper’ container for pepper. As a result, on several breakfast occasions when I was less than fully alert and not quick enough to remember I was using Set 1 or Set 2 instead of Set 3, I fatally infected my porridge with pepper. This came on top of years of inadvertently salting my tomatoes and peppering my corn.
It was time for a summit conference. I insisted we come up with a uniform code to govern salt and pepper dispensing. So we compared our salt and pepper histories.
My mother taught me that salt, with its single “s,” goes in the single-holed container, and that pepper, with its multiple “p’s,” goes in the shaker with multiple holes. In the event that you are presented with two vessels with multiple holes, the salt goes in the one with fewer holes.
My wife could not recall having learned any salt and pepper shaker rules. So, coming from a long line of freethinkers, she had made up her own up using logic and the scientific method. Salt was used more frequently and in greater volume than pepper, so salt belonged in a container with more holes than one for pepper. Simple as that.
(Funnily enough, people ask the same question all over the Internet. There isn’t a consensus, although I admit that the balance of responses tips slightly in favour of my wife’s position. It just goes to prove you can’t trust what you read on the Internet.)
In the end, my wife was gracious and yielded to my entreaties—appropriate salt and pepper shakers were not exactly the issue over which she would draw a line in the sand. So then and there, we emptied salt and pepper shakers 1A and 1B, and 2A and 2B, rearranged the contents, and resolved to move on. I also somewhat sheepishly refilled containers 3A and 3B.
The whole festering incident would never have taken place if there were an international treaty on the identification of salt and pepper shakers—or, come to think of it, if we had had the foresight to trade in all three sets for a Set 4 that had “S” and “P” letters engraved right around the holes. However, given the difficulties they have in coming up with a treaty of any sort, that is unlikely.
So social convention—etiquette—seeks to fill the void; although it didn’t fill it in this case. But my oatmeal incident has made me realize that rules of etiquette may not be such a bad thing in the sense that they make our decisions for us. As psychologist Barry Schwartz said in his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, we’re overwhelmed with choices in our day to day life; sometimes it’s better just to let the convention prevail and save your choice-making skills for what really counts.
Having prevailed in the matter of salt and pepper containers, I am resolved to be gracious and keep my powder dry until another serious issue arises that isn’t governed by a rule of etiquette— like which way up a ketchup bottle should be displayed. We’ll see how that one shakes out.
Comments (0)