Silver Sliver

All families have traditions.  Some are pretty standard like baking certain cookies around the holidays.  Others can be weird clever zany unique like the Silver Sliver.  When I was kid my grandparents always had coffeecake for dessert after dinner at their house.  Most people in the world cut at least a one inch slice of coffeecake.  Not my family.

For some reason we would sliver the thing to death!  I'm sure it started out innocently enough with Grandma asking my dad or grandpa if they wanted a piece and they said, "Maybe just a sliver."  (With hand in the air and thumb and pointer finger gesturing a tiny amount).



Once the sliver was gone, "Well, maybe just one more sliver."  Before you knew it the whole cake was gone.  My cousin, Nigel, would always try and get the thinnest sliver possible.  We would laugh and laugh as we did it.

Now C's family doesn't really know the definition of the word sliver.  If I asked for a sliver that minimum 1 inch piece would be still smaller than their sliver.  Generally the cake is simply divided into the number of people in the room.

As you can guess C thinks the Silver Sliver (Silver is my maiden name) is hilarious.  Oh and guess what? There's another family tradition to tell you about!  C and Z have their own tradition where every Friday they stop for donuts together on the way to school.  Awe!

This week two very special family traditions converged.  Z's preschool is closed for the week so my dad and mom are taking turns babysitting.  Dad (or Papa Howie) comes over in the morning and hangs with Z and then later my mom (Bubbe Fran) meets them for lunch and takes over.

This morning C had some time before school so decided to run to the store for Friday donuts.  He got three, a pink donut for Z, a chocolate donut for himself, and a maple bar donut for Papa.  I mean who doesn't love a maple bar donut?  He told Z that he can finally learn the true meaning/technique of the Silver Sliver.

First, Z made light work of most of the top half of his pink donut.  Once my dad got to our house we demonstrated the Silver Sliver each once.  Z-man was right on board and cut his own sliver.  Quite impressive!

The knife was passed around a few times and we each cut slivers happily.  Then Z-man looked at us and smiled as he picked up the remaining half of the maple donut and ate it all giggling the whole time!  So then my dad and I moved on to slivering most of the rest of Z's half eaten pink donut.  (We have no shame.)