I am Switzerland

The war broke out in our car on the way to the restaurant. The girl, now aged to the earliest point of adult maturity, had fired the opening shot. It had seemed to come out of nowhere:

"New York bagels are the only bagels anyone should eat. You shouldn't bother with bagels from anywhere else."


Granted, I hadn't been listening to the conversation happening on either side of me. I had been sitting there on the hump, thinking about dinner and, with every bump in the road, reconsidering my decision to let everyone prone to car sickness, (or whose growth-spurting bodies no longer comfortably fit in the car's "way back" seats) travel in relative comfort.


The boy's head bolted upright as if roused from sleep by the blast of a horn.


"How can any bagel be bad? By definition, they are dense orbs of starch goodness. Toasted and buttered, they can not fail."


Then it got heated .. or more precisely ... it got a little hot over the dish served cold. And the barbs started to fly past me in both directions.


"What do you mean 'toasted," I'm not talking about secondary processing. The flavors of cream cheese or the salt-ratios of butter. I'm talking about plain bagels taken from a bin and put straight into a paper bag. I'm talking about the attributes of the raw, unadulterated bagel."


For a moment there was mouth-gaping silence.


She had stuck out her proverbial beach. Left it wide open. And he saw the opportunity.


His eyes sparkled as he went for the kill.


"Oh. Well, that explains it then. You are a crazy person who eats raw bagels and decides they don't pass muster. Your bagel expertise is based on a taste for uncooked dough, which, let's face it, is entirely gross no matter what state the Bagel Bakery works out of."


I so wanted to take her side.


She wasn't wrong. There are certainly awful bagels to be had. Thin and anemic, they are often frozen monstrosities that our moms bought in bulk and would get covered in delicate ice crystals before we'd get hungry enough to thaw one out and try to choke it down with a slathering of peanut butter.


But neither was he. In the hours before The Big Shop market day, as the delectable snacks dwindle, you will eat that slab of starch the package calls a "bagel" and you will like it. That's how "junk food" works its terrible magic.


It's also how freshman boys who would rather get root canals than do another page of Earth Science homework, win debates against senior girls who have just been accepted to about a dozen discerning colleges.


Which is where just one ounce of maturity. One moment of calm left out to warm, could turn this whole thing around.


And I saw HER eyes gleam.


“Oh, I see what this is: It's a schmear campaign.”


Just like that the argument ended in laughter.

I didn't even have to use my secret weapon: knowledge that the most popular bagel in New York City right now gets trucked in from Redding, Connecticut.

Somehow I managed to stay in the frying pan and out of that fire. I'm willing to bet it's all because I prefer Swiss on my bagel.