A little girl was watching her mother prepare a fish for dinner. Her mother cut the head and tail off the fish and then placed it into a baking pan. The little girl asked her mother why she cut the head and tail off the fish. Her mother thought for a while and then said, “I’ve always done it that way – that’s how Grandma did it.”
Not satisfied with the answer, the little girl went to visit her Grandma to find out why she cut the head and tail off the fish before baking it.
Grandma thought for a while and replied, “I don’t know. My mother always did it that way.”
So the little girl and the Grandma went to visit Great Grandma to find ask if she knew the answer.
Her Great Grandma thought for a while and said, Because, in my day, we had only a small kitchen, and my baking pan was too small to fit in the whole fish.