Nonfunctional Slack Fill

It was the middle of a pandemic, so you had to wait in line to sit.   I waited, anticipating the act of sitting, thinking about which park bench I would prefer - certainly one with a bit of shade and a bit of sunshine.  I planned to stay awhile and wanted to enjoy some of each.  Everyone had to be far apart, so I knew I would get a whole bench to myself.   No sharing in a pandemic.  No sharing park benches, food, hugs, stories from strangers who stand close and start talking, no sharing of polite hellos that go nowhere. Maybe we didn’t need those anyway. Would throw-away greetings come back after the pandemic?  I held my small paper bag with tiny grease spots forming on the bottom.

I notice a clump of bright yellow daffodils standing proudly among the deep green ivy in the planting bed.  That is a sign of spring for sure.  I am thankful for living in a place that has spring, where daffodils have meaning beyond their status as a common flower.  Here, they blow their trumpets, heralding the renewed season of life.  They tell us we can be thankful that the leafless shrubs are not actually dead, that people are not huddled inward permanently, the ground not frozen forever.

Oh, the line is moving, and I will have a bench. Oh, yes, this is a good one – facing the pond, near the willow tree and yet brushed with a bit of sunlight. It’s getting warmer.  I sit.  The pandemic has been unspeakably tragic.  Yet I have had more time to do nothing, like waiting in line to sit and then sitting. 

I set my backpack down on the bench – the old kind of bench, this one, with wooden slats spaced far enough apart that other people’s crumpled napkins and doughnut wrappers do not remain on the top and ruin it for the next person.  The slats are also conveniently just wide enough to support my paper cup of tea. Which is still hot, thankfully, due to the double cupping, which, I acknowledge, is a waste of paper, yet it does have benefits – insulation of your beverage, protection for your hands from burning, increased stability. 

I set my small paper bag on my lap, open up the top, and peer inside. Nestled at the bottom of the bag, a crispy croissant looks up at me.  It looks important.  A crispy golden croissant equals hope, a feeling of expectation mixed with a desire for a happy outcome.  A crispy croissant embodies faith – faith in the descent of the bite meeting the perfect sequence of shattering, crispy, tender shards, the pockets of airy lightness, the flaps of moist, laminated, buttery dough.  “Dough” is such a mundane word for this bit of magic.

In this morning’s newspaper I read about Nonfunctional Slack Fill, apparently an industry term that describes the extra air space in packaging used to make us think we are getting more product than what is in fact inside the box or bag.  People are filing lawsuits. Oh, for sure, how many times have I popped open a bag of chips and thought, that’s it?  Eleven chips? 

But what about this crispy croissant?  It also is designed with nonfunctional slack fill, intentional pockets of air, large pockets actually, if your croissant is especially high quality, which mine is, because I walked the extra distance this morning to Eighty-seventh Street to go to Heaven, the better bakery, and spent the extra change.  Those horizontal pockets of air separate the moist, buttery, soft layers of dough from the crisp flakes that must stay dry until you smash it all together in the bite-down.  So yes, this croissant has non-functional slack fill.             

The term is a misnomer. The air they seal into your chip bag does have a function. In part, to protect your chips from being crushed, but mainly it is a bold and knowing act of trickery, hoodwinking, misrepresentation, false advertising.  I fall for it.  I am deceived every time I buy my chips.  

Likewise, the nonfunctional slack fill in my croissant has purpose. But deception plays no part at all.  In fact, the nonfunctional slack fill is critical to the whole concept of croissant, and therefore to my delight and thrill in the experience of this simple yet complex pastry, which would be a flat, yeasty, greasy patty of unrisen bread with homogenous texture were it not for the nonfunctional slack fill, those illuminated holes.  And then where would we be?  I have not done the research, but I know this crescent-shaped roll goes back centuries.  I am about to experience a historic moon pastry, not just a wad of dough to stuff in as morning nourishment.

Imagine music without any pauses amidst the notes.  Just continuous sound. I suppose there is music like that, but wouldn’t it need more shape than a continuous note?  Sometimes music needs pockets of air, too.  Silences.  All those assorted gaps and round spaces that enliven rhythm.  A rest in music is a moment between the memory of what just came before and an expectation of what might lie ahead.

Waiting at the bottom of my paper bag, my crispy croissant looks glorious, with its golden-brown sheen and high middle, its pronounced terracing of layered and baked fat and flour defining the shape of its sides.  Before the pandemic I never would have taken the time to appreciate the craft of a morning roll, such as the detail of fine blisters of crust that you know will stick to your fingers as soon as you grab hold of the croissant and then put it down again. But you do not put it down once you take the first bite, because you cannot stop eating it, and it is only a few more bites before you get to that exquisite nub at the end, which is more crunch than pudding-like dough and is the perfect last morsel. The crispy croissant always rewards my hope, my faith.

I look towards the park entrance. It is still early, but people are gathering, standing in the choreography of a dotted line, kept apart from each other by the pandemic, like molecules kept apart by invisible forces.  Some come not to sit but to stroll.  All over the country, people no longer pouring into stores, theatres, stadiums, and parks but dribbled in with intentional space throughout – nonfunctional slack fill.  I imagine Ferris wheels and carousels filled with as much suspended space as people.  What is the laughter of a movie theatre one-fifth full?  When does the din of a restaurant crowded with chattering diners become the uneasy quiet of a room with more empty tables than full ones?

I return to my reason for being here, to enjoy the park with tea and croissant. The sun’s warmth promises a beautiful day ahead.  Who knows how long I will sit here doing nothing, or when the moment will occur when I feel compelled to yield my spot to the next person waiting in line to sit.  I do not need to decide about the future now.  I lift my crispy, cloud-like croissant out of its bag. The sun hits the crust, and I can see the butter making it shine.