Friday, February 13, 2009

The Parable of the Purple Fork

[This was partly inspired by Little Dudestronomer's experiences in intermediate dining techniques.]

Let's say that you have spoons. Lots of spoons. Some are big, some are small; some are silver, some are plastic, some are wooden; some are yellow, some are purple. And you keep them all together in your spoon drawer.
One day while you are preparing to eat, you see that at your place setting there is something similar, but a little different. It's clearly used for eating food, just like your spoons; but it isn't rounded like your spoons at the end. Instead, it has four sharpish points. But the other end is almost exactly like your spoons.
What is this new thing? You're not entirely sure about what to call it. But more importantly, you don't know where to put it. You have a spoon drawer, a bowl drawer and a cup drawer; no "random pointy sorta spoon thingy" drawer. But you decide that it's more like a spoon than a bowl or a cup. So you keep it in the spoon drawer for now. After all, it's used for eating food, it has a handle, and it's purple, like some of your spoons.
Time passes. In fact, lots of time passes. So much time has passed that you're now much older and much more sophisticated. You have a lot of drawers now; you have one for your spatulas and one for your ladles. You have so many drawers that it's time to reorganize. So you're going back through your drawers and you come across that purple fork.
By now of course you realize it's a fork, and you have many more of them. In fact, you have a whole drawer of nothing but forks. You think back fondly of your early utensil days and remember your wonder at this new device and you pause to ask yourself a question: where should you keep your fork?
On the one hand, it's just like those other forks, with its pointy tines. On the other, you've kept it with the spoons all these years; what's the point in changing things now?

Now, dear readers, a question for you: where would you keep the purple fork? Post your opinion in the comments section.

And bonus points to anyone who guesses where I'm going with this. It's an astronomical direction, I promise. All will be revealed next week.



3 comments:

Amy said...

Dude, it totally goes in the fork drawer, with the rest of the forks.
And Pluto isn't really a planet.

Mom said...

I'd keep it in my special drawer for stuff for grandkids, of course

JHD said...

I call it a fork. In fact, I'd throw anything that shovels grub into my pie hole a fork, no matter the size or shape. I'll need larger drawers, so I'll go ahead and have a kitchen re-design. Since that might mess up the placement of sink, fridge, stove, etc., I'll just need a new house. Since I can't afford a new house, I'll pretend Isaac is a community volunteer with a hideous disease so ABC will come and build us a new house with 250,000 square feet of pie-hole-stuffin' drawer bliss. Being on TV, however, everybody will find out we lied about Isaac, and I go to jail for fraud. I lose my career, my family, and I end up in a TEXAS prison. That @!*%!&! "fork" has just ruined my life.

Nuke Pluto before it destroys us all.