A man was watching his wife as she prepared to fry sausages in a pan. He noticed that before placing the sausages in the pan, she always cut off both ends, threw them away, and cooked only the middle part.
Puzzled, he asked, "Honey, why do you always cut off the ends of the sausage before frying it?"
His wife shrugged and replied, "I don’t know. It’s just how my mum taught me to do it."
Curious, the next day they visited her mother. The wife asked, "Mom, why did you teach me to cut off the ends of the sausage before frying it?"
The mother paused for a moment, then said, "I’m not really sure. That’s how my mother always did it. We should ask her."
So the two of them went to visit the grandmother. The wife turned to her grandmother and asked, "Grandma, why do we always cut off the ends of the sausage before frying it?"
The grandmother smiled thoughtfully and said, "That’s just the way my mother taught me. I never really questioned it. We should ask her."
Determined to get to the bottom of this, the three women visited the great-grandmother at her retirement home.
After explaining the situation, the great-granddaughter asked loudly, "Great-grandma, why did you teach us to cut off the ends of the sausage before frying it?"
The elderly woman looked surprised and replied, "Wait, you’re all still doing that? I only did it because my pan was too small to fit the whole sausage!"