A coworker came up with this one. The original source is lost. Around Holiday time we all get to see the family and pass on lore and gossip. One day a little girl was watching her mother make a great roast beef. She cut off the ends, wrapped it in string, seasoned it and set it in the great roasting pan. The little girl asked her mother why she cut off the end of the roast. The mother said after some thought that it was the way that her mother had done it. That weekend grandma came over to visit and the little girl and the mother went to her and asked why she had cut the end off of the roast before cooking. After some thought replied, because that was the way her mother had done it. Now great grandmother was quite old and in a nursing home. But the little girl had the chance the next weekend to see her and asked again the questions. She looked at them a bit annoyed and said, "Why so it would fit in the pan, of course." To quote my grandmother "Such is life..."
(From the "Rest" of RHF)