Buttering

As a kid I developed this aversion to buttering my own bread. I don't know why, I just hated to do it. Some kids hate their food touching, or eat their food one at a time, but for me it was spreading butter or jam or what have you. My mother enabled this type of behaviour well into my teens by buttering my toast for me. As an adult I developed a coping technique by buttering as quickly and sloppily as possible, often resulting in big globs and always ignoring the corners.
These days it only comes up at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, usually in the form of heckling; my siblings asking me if I need help buttering my bread.



I spent this last weekend tiling my bathroom. Smearing mortar on the back of each tile is called "buttering". That's the official term. I did so, one tile at a time, a nice even coat, all the way to the edges. I hated every minute of it.