Today's Journal
TABLESPOON
One time many years ago, I remember sitting at the family dinner table and noticed that we all had a knife, fork and spoon, but we were encouraged by my mother to use a fork to eat most meals except those that obviously required a spoon… like pinto beans, apricot cobbler, oat meal, homemade ice cream, cornbread and sweet milk mixed together in a glass of milk, biscuits with Karo syrup on them, or eggs and biscuits with white gravy, or potato soup and stuff like that. Things like hamburgers, hot dogs, baloney sandwiches, Vienna Sausage sandwiches, fried chicken, bean sandwiches and fried potato sandwiches were eaten holding them in the hand.Other meals were more complicated. Things like hamburger patties, fried potatoes, an occasional salad, turnip greens, chocolate cake, fried eggs, pancakes, sliced dried beef and white gravy over toast, cherry pie and such were a toss-up… eat them with a spoon or a fork. We could either listen to my mother or watch my dad. My dad ate with a spoon. A tablespoon. I went back and forth growing up choosing either a fork or a spoon.
Then when I married Roz, she started taming many of my feral ways including eating with a fork instead of a spoon. I have half-way tried to make the right choices at the table. But why put a bowl of salad on the left side of your plate at a table setting when a person is right-handed? Why can’t a bottle of Tapatio be on the table? Who doesn’t put black pepper on cantaloupe? After several years, I have returned to eating more with a spoon. It is so much easier, practical and realistic. I remember clearly when my dad was asked why he ate with a spoon… ‘How do think a tablespoon got its name… its a spoon you use at the table.’
“That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?” Jesus