The Ugly Fork

    I was making room in the basement for some work to be done and came across several boxes long forgotten in a remote abscess under the stairs by the furnace. There was no time to check their contents. The mission was to get them out of the way as quickly as possible since the workers were coming early the next morning. As I took one box from the shadowy corner, the top flipped open to reveal a mismatched collection of flatware that I hadn’t thought about in years. Right on top was The Ugly Fork. As I stopped my labors momentarily to behold this family relic, a flood of mealtime memories came back.
   We didn’t have much when we started out, my wife and I. Except for a brand new bedroom set purchased from our wedding cash and checks, most of our furniture was scrounged from garage sales and my college dorm room. I got the stuff even my roommate didn’t want, including a pole lamp and a beer-stained swivel chair. Our TV was a 21-inch black and white Admiral with a tilted picture tube that we bought for twenty-five bucks from a friend of a friend. Meals were served on a hodge-podge of plates, glasses, and the aforesaid flatware.
   Shortly after we bought our first house, the local Mobil station at 159th and Pulaski began offering free flatware with a fill-up. To fill my ‘69 Camaro back then cost a whole four bucks and those twelve gallons of gas came with my choice of a knife, fork, or spoon. With enough gas purchases, we’d eventually have a set of matching flatware. Even though I’d built a rapport with the attendant and he’d throw me an extra piece every now and then, getting the complete set was going to take a while.
   It really wasn’t all that ugly. It just was not your high-quality flatware. The business ends were some kind of shiny metal shoved into handles made from wood or a wood substitute. Still, they worked and somewhere in the hopefully not-to-distant future we’d be able to lay our table with a matching set. Until that day we’d have to contend with daily dinnertime discord between our children.
   Even at a young age our daughters, born twenty-seven months apart, were very competitive. The older one was upset that her reign as the firstborn of a new generation had been infringed upon by this interloper with whom she had to share a bedroom. The younger one was born with an innate ability to push people’s buttons that she’s kept to adulthood.
   At every meal the first thing they would do was check their utensils. The younger one, if she happened to be dealt one of the good forks in shiny solid metal with a fancy filagree and her sister didn’t, would exclaim, “I got a pretty fork.”
   Of course, this caused an outburst from the older one. She cried that she wouldn’t eat a bite from an ugly fork and pouted until she got a pretty one. This went on despite my insistence that the food on the utensil was more important than the utensil itself. This argument had no effect on a four-year-old. We had to get her a “pretty” fork or else she wouldn’t eat.
   Our sons who came later, on the other hand, would use any means to get food to their faces no matter how pretty or ugly it was.
   Since parenting is a learn as you go activity I eventually figured out that the way to put an end to the fork conflict, as it came to be known, was to replace my younger girl’s pretty fork with an ugly one. They both used their ugly forks in sullen silence but at least no one was crying–not about a stupid fork anyway.
   Eventually we got a good set of matching flatware but the freebies from Mobil still had a spot in one of our kitchen drawers. As time went by they fell apart as whatever force that was holding them together gave out, or the faux wood handles cracked and broke. Still, that one ugly fork remains.
   Next time we’re all together for a meal I’ll see that one or the other daughter gets it and see what happens. The ability to push people’s buttons is one trait my younger daughter inherited from me.