The other night at dinner I found myself sitting down to eat without a fork. Or cereal. The first is noteworthy because I had prepared a salad; the second because the only utensil I had grabbed from the abundant silverware holders of our very own Thorne dining hall was a cereal spoon. In fact, the latter is doubly noteworthy because you can't accidentally acquire a cereal spoon in Thorne?no, no, no: unlike the large, frisbee-like soup spoons or the slender, sly parfait spoons, you have to HUNT down a cereal spoon. And what's more, cereal spoons are practically on the endangered/reserved utensil list; it is not uncommon to go two or three moons without spotting a cereal spoon in its native area (near the giant cereal depositors and cold steel milk udders)?indeed, I will confess that in desperate times I have kicked elders in order to outpace them to that last remaining cereal spoon, times of my life I would just assume leave in the cold, dark past where they can only taunt me in my dream-sleep when I am alone and vulnerable.
Anyways, so there I was eating my salad with a cereal spoon. Perhaps the sane man might have exchanged his hard-to-find cereal spoon with a neighbor's fork, or simply stood up, walked back into the servery and picked himself up a fork, thus advancing his life with the single small step of having the correct cutlery. Well, I do not know said sane man. More to the point, there comes a point in each man's life (I know nothing about the lives of women, largely due to the fact that I have only spent a handful of days as one, and even then it was really still just me in a cheap skirt and a cloud of naughty thoughts) where he must stand behind what he is, less than great or very much less than great. So I curled my neck and thrust my chin toward my plate whilst tipping it ever so slightly into my mouth, the simultaneity with the chin thrusts sufficient to allow me to quite conspicuously sip my salad.
I like to think eating is one of my strong suits. When young and free of worries, I practiced eating while others practiced sports. Some drain their bodies of precious fluids and foodstuffs in a self-loathing process of exertion known as "working out;" I, on the other hand, rather than make my body a temple, have instead worked hard for years to make my body an arc, storing victuals for the all-too-possible event of another world-wide flood in which all food and drink not in my stomach will perish, even if it says "non-perishable" or "just add water" on the box. Yet despite my years of discipline, there I was not long ago, chasing stray peas around my plate with a stupid cereal spoon like some newbie to the eating scene.
As is typical of our cruel world controlled by a cruel god who most likely giggled when he saw me kick elders for a cereal spoon in those cold, dark times which I would prefer to stop repeatedly raising to the forefront of this discussion, that same day that I failed so miserably at what I practice the most was the day I handed in my "intent to graduate" form to The Dean of Something and Blah Blah. That form is proof that I have absolutely no excuse for my culinary equipment failure; that form states quite explicitly that as a senior intent on graduating from this fine institution in the forthcoming spring I have eaten approximately 92 to the third and a baker's dozen meals at Thorne, that I know where the forks are, and that I know that salad is very hard to eat with a cereal spoon unless doused in (soy?) milk. The coincidence of that day hit me like a bus, a bus that could speak and said to me, "you are much too old to be so bad at this!" too old to be so bad at this!"