Happy Birthday Sliced Bread

On the fiftieth birthday of sliced bread

How could I not have known?
Why has no one ever said?
They really should have told me!
I'm older than sliced bread.
Sliced bread is only fifty -
In fact fifty years today -
And me, I'm fifty-four
And beginning to decay.

For four years from the start
Of my still enduring life
People went on cutting
Their bread up with a knife
They managed for themselves
The thickness of a slice
And most people I am sure
Sliced their fingers once or twice.

But four years after me
The sliced loaf was invented
And sandwich makers everywhere
Were happy and contended.
The best thing since sliced bread?
Many things are said to be!
But the best that went before?
Well, clearly, that was me.