How Much Does 50 Tons of Bagels Weigh?

Move Ten Years Forward Or Ten Years Back.

If your first thought is that no one told you that understanding higher math would be a requirement for reading this post you might want to grab 50 winks or a slurp down a couple of cups of coffee before you finish reading these words.

That is not because the answer to how much does 50 tons of bagels weigh is obvious but don’t think you are going to be given a reason for why you need to know how much that weighs.

You don’t need to know that any more than you need to know how much space is required to house 50 tons of bagels or if 50 tons of bagels is considered to be an extra large load for any of the major bagel manufacturers.

What The Hell Are You Talking About?

If you are among the 2,983 of my closest friends who are daily readers you are probably wondering  why I haven’t brought up the confluence of Chanukah and Thanksgiving as it relates to my distaste for the holiday season as well as curiosity about my personal connection to Jimmy Hoffa and President Kennedy.

Or maybe you are shaking your head now because you are really confused and are unsure if you should keep reading this. Well my answer is to keep reading this because some of the answers you seek might just be coming.

They are all tied into the little boy you see in the photo above because his Bar Mitzvah is imminent and I have to write a speech for it. Actually I don’t have to write a speech because I am fast on my feet and speaking off the top of my head is easy, always has been.

But the thing is that I want whatever I say to be the sort of thing that he remembers. I don’t want it to be the kind of thing that is just forgotten about and lost in the sands of time.

I want it to have a happier sort of feeling than the last section of Ozymandias.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

How To Write A Bar Mitzvah Speech

The question of how to write a Bar Mitzvah speech isn’t hard to answer, at least not structurally. It needs a beginning, a middle and an end.

Simple enough.

So the question I ask is what do I want my son to take from this? What message do I hope to leave him and his younger sister with? Is this supposed to something that motivates and inspires or congratulatory?

The answers to these questions are subjective but I can assure you that you will find more than a few people who disagree with that. They’re the same people who tell you that if you breastfeed you will fix/hurt your children and that any child who attends public/private/homeschool is forever damaged and missing the advantages of those who did something else.

I don’t know about you, but I tend not to pay much attention to what others do. It is not because I think everything I do is perfect because I make my share of mistakes.

It is because there is no single way to do this parenting bit. No one right path and every one of us is just winging it.

So when I think about what sort of speech I want to give I suppose the first question I ask is what can I say that he will remember. In the midst of all of the excitement that is tied into this moment what is going to stick with him.

He knows his mom and I are proud of him and that his family loves him. He knows that we support him and we can barely articulate how proud we are.

What He Might Remember

It sounds goofy, but I am tempted to talk about how much 50 tons of bagels weigh and h0w much space it might take to hold it. If I compare fifty tons of bagels to fifty tons of donuts he might actually remember that too.

But then again maybe the most important point to make here is to remind him again of all of that support and love. Maybe this is the perfect time to publicly reiterate it.

Or maybe the best way to help him remember that the serious moments in life are broken up by lots of different things and moments of levity is to talk about those bagels and donuts.

I’d share some more thoughts about it with you but all this talk has made me terribly hungry so we’ll have to save that conversation for later.

See you in the comments, you bring the lox and I’ll bring the cream cheese.

• Saved: Blogging