Cutting the cheese: In which I make a completely sexist observation

Why can't most women cut it?

Wait — let me amend that. Why can't any of the women I know slice?

Specifically, I'm talking about cutting and slicing of the deli persuasion, and I'm basing this on these completely baseless observations: My mom is notorious for literally hacking at blocks of cheese as if she were really lactose intolerant; my wife, Lopez!, cuts at a slant no matter how hard she tries; and every time I go to get some meat and cheese at my office common area after a female co-worker, it looks like a murder scene.

Lemme 'splain that last part. The company I work for deals with a lot of outside vendors, independent companies and service providers that help produce our end product. So, during the holiday season they tend to send us stuff in appreciation of the working relationship we share.

In other words, we get sent a lot of free stuff, most of which you can eat.

I'm new to this department, but since it works most heavily with vendors its' end-of-year booty is legendary. Tins of cookies and popcorn, smoked sausages and cheeses, even smoked salmon and whole spiral-cut hams find their way to the office. It's like heaven, and God is the head manager at a really good Hickory Farms.

Today we received a couple of sausages and blocks of cheese, and that's when I noticed that — like my wife, mom, grandmother and sister — the women I work with apparently don't slice straight, either.

Whuh? Is it because the whole turkey-carving, a-dull-knife-is-more-dangerous, Jim-Bowie-died-fighting-with-a-knife-named-after-himself thing is one of those macho rites of passage passed down from father to son? This theory, of course, doesn't include women who are professional cutters like butchers, surgeons and that girl who tore my heart out in fifth grade. I'm talking about the average woman who seems to leave a ragged trail of destruction and mutilated foodstuffs at cutting boards everywhere.

Of course, I've seen plenty of men who wield a knife as if it were a broom they were using to put out a flaming mouse. But generally, I've noticed this more with women.

So answer me this — do the women you know stink at cutting the cheese?


(Hey guys — Nel here. Obviously, this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. OK? OK! And ladies, seriously — what did that block of muenster ever do to you?!?)