Eating Utensils...A Mystery Untold

Have you ever pondered the eating utensils that you use on a daily basis? As for myself, I scrutinize and study the little (and sometimes uncommonly large) pokers and proders that make our eating experience better (or so they would have you believe).

Let's start with the obsessive need to fit in. This is a common phenomenon that we find in Chinese and other Asian style restaurants. Take someone like me, for example, I'm a fairly normal individual with an abnormal need to fit in to the society. I will go into a Chinese restaurant that is serving a variety of rice and noodle items. I will then proceed to awkwardly pick up and fidget with the two sticks that they gave me. Being an American the smart and logical thing to do would be to pick up the fork (sitting next to the chopsticks) and use it. But no, I do a horrible job of trying to put food in my mouth. This only leads to food on the ground, table, my clothes, and sometimes even my neighbors clothes.

Give it up for the society that manages to eat all food items with two sticks; and never resorts to stabbing the food like a shish-ka-bob.

Now, I have always been fascinated with the concept of a spork.
That crazy utensil that lays somewhere between being a spoon and a fork. But never quite growing up into complete adulthood as either. A genetic defect that is morphed between two worlds. I used to ponder the use of a spork. How useful can it really be? Soups make it useless with those little notches at the end; unless it's a stew. Then there are those times when you try to fork something into your mouth to find out that your notches are too short to hold the food or they break off altogether. It is a sad and pathetic utensil.

But then there are the other definitions that you gave for this unusual word. First, I must open myself up to utter humiliation because I know this; but the alien race that you all are thinking of right about now are Vulcans (one main character on the said Star Trek show was named Spock - very close to the word spork, and thus probably causing the confusion). Now you can all blog me in shame about my geekiness that abounds from simply possessing this information.

Finally, I like the idea of using spork as an active word. But I must admit saying that you are going to spork someone does sound a little dirty. Maybe not the best word to use...Could be confused with to many other things. I recently found a website that is completely dedicated to the many uses of a spork. It mocks it, reveres it, and even finds many uses for it. What will we think of next in the line of eating utensils?