There are many questions you may ask to get to know someone. Some people like to go for the big-hitters—the meaning of life, political affiliations, darkest secrets. Others prefer to keep it small—favourite movie, ice cream flavour preferences, or simply how your day was. I, however, like to go even smaller, to the point of triviality. For me at least, the most important question to ask someone is, “how do you cut your toast in the morning?”.
This question may seem extremely inconsequential, and frankly it is—that’s the point. By asking such a boring question, you offer people the opportunity to find interest in the mundane. For me at least, this is an incredibly appealing attribute to find in a friend or a partner. The ability to find beauty in simple things, happiness in dark times, and insight from the ordinary, can vastly expand your horizons in life and prevent you from becoming stagnant in your behaviour and views. It is also provides a sense of how creative and imaginative the person is; the sort of “yes, and…” energy required for improvisation.
This is especially important when forming a romantic relationship. No matter how compatible you are in terms of your interest, spending a lot of time with someone can naturally exhaust the stockpile of interest-related conversation. Instead, by being able to find interesting conversation in the most trivial of things, you are able to learn more about your partner and, more importantly, have fun with them regardless.
I view this question as somewhat of a counterpart to Shopping Cart Theory, which suggests that you can effectively judge the moral character of an individual based on whether they choose to return a shopping “cart” (trolley, as I would call it) to its designated area after use. While Shopping Cart Theory provides a litnus test for morality, I feel that the Toast Test does the same for creativity and imagination.
Furthermore, although at first glance it may seem like there is not much substance in a discussion about toast-cutting, I would argue that it provides an effective gateway to discovering the deeper aspects of a conversation partner’s personality, without risking putting someone off with a direct line of questioning. A sequence of toast-cutting related questions might go as follows:
- How do you cut your toast in the morning?
- Why do you cut it in that way?
- What do you think it says about you that you choose to cut it in that way?
- Have you always cut it in that way?
- Are their occasions where you would cut it differently or appreciate it being different (e.g. at a hotel’s continental breakfast)
- Is the way you cut your toast the same as your parents/siblings do?
Responses to such questions, when read between the lines, can potentially reveal rather central details of ones character.
Obviously, such a conversation has to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek; I would avoid going full toast-Freudian and claiming that your choice in toast shape will significantly shape your choice of romantic partners or lead you to develop severe neuroses. That said, I don’t think it is too extreme to suggest that their may be some divergence between the ranks of full-slice-swallows, four-corner-consumers, two-triangle-tuck-in-ers and solider-snackers, that is worth paying attention to.