<p>Becky and I are hiking on a path in the woods near a waterfall. We walk around a tree on opposite sides, and on a whim I say, “Bread and butter.”</p>
<p>The next time we come to a tree, we grab each other’s hand so we can do it properly and say “Bread and butter,” together as we walk around it.</p>
<p>Farther down the path, we come to a small boulder. Suddenly, we have a dilemma. The stone is only about knee high to us, so we wouldn’t have to unclasp hands, but still we are separated as we walk around it, so our question is: Do we say “bread and butter”or not?</p>
<p>“What are the rules for this?” we wonder aloud. This is the kind of problem that occupies our minds as we wander when we are on vacation.</p>
<p>I loved bread and butter when I was a kid. It was a great snack or sometimes even a lunch when Mom paired it with some Campbell’s Tomato Soup. My sense is bread (carbohydrates and gluten) and butter (cholesterol and saturated fat) are not so wildly appreciated these days. No doubt, awareness of the health risks is a good and sensible thing, but still, a slab of soft butter smeared on Wonder Bread was a singular childhood pleasure.</p>
<p>I’m not sure where I first heard the “bread and butter” phrase. I think it might have been a Warner Brothers cartoon. These two big cats — lions, I think — are pacing back and forth in their cage repeating, “Bread and butter. Bread and butter,” each time they go around a pole.</p>
<p>I realized long ago that much of my basic knowledge of Western culture has come from cartoons. Snippets of symphonic music, scenes from Shakespeare, iconic visual arts all were plot devices or sight gags that figured in the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes which played endlessly on our television. Cartoons were a gateway to my awareness of the creative works of Western Civilization. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were my professors.</p>
<p>Wikipedia calls the phrase “Bread and Butter” a “superstitious blessing or charm.” Couples say it to ward off the bad luck of letting something come between them. The idea is that once butter is put on bread, the two become hard or even impossible to separate. Like buttered bread, couples and friends become one thing and must not be unjoined.</p>
<p>It serves the same magical function as another saying from childhood: Step on a crack and break your mother’s back. These blessings and charms give us the feeling of having at least some control, a bit of an edge when the fates come knocking. (And speaking of that, knocking on wood would be another example of a blessing and charm.)</p>
<p>But back to our dilemma with the stone in the path. It seems to me that if some object comes between Becky and me, something that is in a sense separating us, we would be required by the explanation of the superstition to say “bread and butter.” However, since we did not unclasp our hands, we were never really separated. And suppose the small boulder we walked around were only as big as a pebble. Would that be sufficient to engage the bread and butter requirement? Hmm. The problems these old sayings generate are not as easy to solve as they might first appear.</p>
<p>As we continued along the path we started looking at the river running beside us and soon forgot our bread and butter questions which was probably a good thing. I’m still not sure I have an answer that satisfies. I’ll need to do some more research. Maybe I’ll check and see what Bugs Bunny would say about it.</p>
