Options Make The Heart Grow Fonder

Bagel Mishaps & Monopolies

I do not live in Montreal, yet was raised to treat Montreal bagels as a sacred article of faith, and sign of Goodness, Love, and Order in the universe.

Now let me be clear: the term “Montreal bagel” is loaded with about a dozen (get it?) qualifiers that don’t necessarily demand it be from Montreal, though there’s no getting around the fact that it must be a bagel. A wood-fired oven is an absolute must. Such ovens exist outside of la belle province, and their artful use in cooking circular bread is fairly well understood.

The main axis on which the entire matter rotates is freshness. And when I say freshness, I mean heat. If the bagel is borderline too hot to bite into, it gets full points. For every passing minute of its existence – as it falls victim to Newton’s laws of thermodynamics – it loses a shred of its sacredness. And as much as I love Montreal bagels, I’ll be the first to admit after a couple hours, they rival granite in both density and delicacy.

And this is where our saga begins. Not in Montreal, but in a much humbler city 600 km west of it, a city once known as Berlin.

The city in question boasts a single, very literally-named establishment with a wood burning oven, which makes bagels until they run out. Fulfilling my duties as a warm-blooded mammal, I visit this place every so often, and ask for the hottest bagels they have. Sometimes I see a new batch near the flames, looking close to ready, and I’ll go for a walk around the block so I can return for a dozen that’ll burn me.

That’s where the magic happens.

On a recent Saturday I visited this bagel shop and the bagelier gave me a weird look after I asked her for the hottest ones she had. It wasn’t misinterpretation. Judging by the extremely descriptive name of the business, her mind isn’t inclined toward misinterpretation. She knew I was asking for hot bagels, and she replied that she wasn’t dealing with that again. I was confused, as we stood a few metres from a raging fire whose sole purpose is to cook bread, allowing the establishment to live up to its name which describes this exact phenomenon.

To be clear, bagels aren’t scarce. When I visit this place I’m not buying bagels; I could get bagels at the grocery store or any number of other dreadful options at coffeeshops around town. No… I’m buying heat, contained in a bagel. That’s where the party’s at, that’s what’s rare (at least in this town).

She proceeded to do a song and dance that didn’t bring me any of the joy that an actual song and dance would have, and after a huff and a puff dropped a dozen bagels on the counter, most of which had succumbed a very predictable demise over the past hour they’d been out of the oven. For some reason, she didn’t seem to grasp that the essence of her business is selling hot bagels. My request didn’t demand that she climb into the oven to fetch a particular bagel sixth-from-the-back-and-on-the-left-side, or use some exotic potion in her recipe. No, I made such a simple request that a person could actually take a small nap while performing it: wave your hand around the pile of bagels, feel for the one radiating the most heat, grab, deposit into bag, repeat. Count to twelve. Exchange bag for money. Wake up from nap.

This post isn’t aiming to besmirch this bagel shop. The bagelier was probably having some sort of existential crisis or had just lost a bunch of money gambling or something. No, this post is about options, and how much changes when you don’t have any.

In a situation where Montreal bagel shops abound, I could have turned on my heel, left the bag of bagel-shaped granite blocks on the counter, and never set foot in this shop again. These things happen, and competition keeps bageliers from letting their Nietzsche-reading creep into their manners. Maintain simple thoughts. Bag the warm bagels. Smile.

But here, in my humble town, this bagel shop is the only one of its kind. My religious devotion toward the circle in bread form is similar to Pythagoras’ cult’s devotion to the circle in all its forms. I paid for those cold bagels and left the shop knowing I’d probably return. I can take a bagelier’s abuse in the form of cold bagels, and feel trapped enough to return, simply with the hope that she’s in a better mood next time.

I’m at the whims of a bagel dealer’s caprices. It’s not a good place to be. Not having options is never a good place to be.

Consider your career, your relationships, the car you drive, the bookie where you place your horse bets, or the horse-steroid dealer you use to ensure your horses are primed for victory.

I’m not sure whether we register our options consciously or unconsciously, but some part of us knows when we can easily make a change. And when we know we can make a change, everything else follows. Your attitude, your confidence, your ability to make or take a joke. When you have an in-demand skillset and you see your company steadily decreasing its care for its employees, you’re out the door faster than they can say “free lunch”.

But when you know your options are limited, everything else also follows. Your bookie can smell the weakness. Suddenly your odds are awful and he’s short-changing you when your juiced-up horses take the trifecta. You keep coming back, though you really shouldn’t be.

My hope is that my bagelier stops reading Nietzsche before her shift and remembers she’s in the business of selling warmth in bread form. But that’s the problem: because I have too few options, all I have is hope.

A person with options makes a change, faster than you can say sesame.