True Confessions

I am not really sure how this conversation started, or how I came up with the experiment but I still remember how it ended. While sitting on the stoop outside our apartment building in Brooklyn, the conversation turned to white bread. Yeah, white bread, the kind people eat, the kind most kids ate with bologna (not me but most kids). As kids do, everyone was comparing notes on white bread. I, being the smart ass kid I was, decided it was my job to explain to these poor souls how foolish they were. "White bread is bad" I yelled. "It has absolutely no nutritional value at all, you might as well eat your mattress. white bread=mattress". This tidbit of information was not greeted well. Everyone disagreed. What could I do?. Pushed against a wall, having to defend my stance on white bread. I got indignant, because that is what happens when you challenge my knowledge. "I'll prove it", said I, with a sly smirk. Thus began the ugliness, which leads to my confession.

Ramon ran home to get some white bread. While we waited for his return. I planned my experiment. Ramon returned with a whole bag of white bread. Grabbing one slice I started my walk to the empty lot next door. Everyone followed, I felt just like the pied piper. The empty lot next door was strewn with your usual garbage, as well as an old mattress, which I quickly reminded everyone tasted and had the same nutritional value of white bread. I paused, just in case anyone wanted to try some mattress, no one did. (I was grinning, imagine my luck, a mattress, right there, just waiting to become my prop.) Among the items and things in the empty lot were several stray cats. Friendly enough since they ate pretty well, given the amount of rats which also occupied the lot.

"White bread is so bad for you that it kills cats". There I said it, no turning back now. My friends, all anxiously awaiting the experiment stood silently around me. I bent down and offered my slice of white bread to the stray cats. One actually came over, sniffed the bread and then laid down at my feet. (He didn't want white bread when rats were so much tastier) I couldn't conduct my experiment if he didn't eat it, so I picked him up and decided to gently "force" the cat to eat the white bread. Now, if you remember from your childhood days of eating white bread, it does have a tendency to stick to the roof of your mouth. Now imagine the roof of a cat's mouth, and then imagine that same cat being "fed" white bread by yours truly. The white bread stuck to the roof of his mouth, the cat freaked and everyone started to scream and then as quick as lightening ... the cat ran ... across the street ... without looking both ways ... he got hit by a car and killed. While everyone continued to scream, I exclaimed in my most scientific voice "see, white bread kills cats". White bread=mattress=dead cat.

The screaming, the crying and the screeching of tires brought out some parents, everyone screaming and pointing at me, I had killed a cat. I, still in science mode, declaring "it was the bread". The cat dead in the street. The travesty, the horror, it was ugly, dear friends. It took many years and some therapy but eventually after much re-telling most people just remember the car killed the cat. Interestingly enough, no kids ate white bread in my neighborhood for many years after that incident. I decided science wasn't my thing after just one experiment gone awry.

A word to the wise, never feed white bread to a cat. (and if you do, make sure he looks both ways before crossing the street.)