Multi-Purpose

My wife was recently in the hospital for a whole week. This post is not about why she ended up there. That’s a whole other story that I will likely share here at some point, but it’s long, drawn out and a little too recent for me to find any humor in it so I’m just going to write about something else. Well – it’s kind of related, but not really. Here goes…

The hospital Ellen was imprisoned in has a cafeteria downstairs just around the corner from the Emergency Room. I found that juxtaposition a little troubling, but during a whole week of eating three meals a day there I didn’t have to bolt to the adjacent wing at any time. So maybe it’s just a coincidence that the two facilities were so close together. Or maybe it was just forethought on the part of a hospital architect who had been victimized by bad cafeteria food. Either way it was inconsequential. The food was tolerable and not overpriced.

All over the hospital (including the cafeteria area) there were little hand sanitizer dispensers. They had signs on them that said something about a germ-free hospital and how these little dispensers would help insure that condition. That gave me a bit of a pause. “Germ-free” hospital…” OK, that’s interesting. There are a whole lot of sick people in the hospital. And we know, thanks to advances in science, that illness can be caused by germs and not a small dwarf living inside your stomach as once posited by the SNL character Theodoric of York – Medieval Barber. To get to the condition of a germ-free hospital you would need to kick all of those sick people out onto the sidewalk. Get outta here you bunch of germ infested vermin! Injured people only from here on out. Broken leg? C’mon in! Fractured skull? Pull up a gurney! Meningitis? Sorry, you and your germs need to find some place else to foul up with your microbial infestation.

Sorry. I got on a tangent there for a moment. Back to the cafeteria. In their never ending quest for a germ-free environment, the hospital installed utensil dispensers for plastic forks, spoons and knives. I have to admit these are pretty nifty. You pull a lever and a single utensil pops out for you to take. No grubbing around in open bins of forks and spoons with your (that’s right) germy mitts. You only touch the utensils you are personally going to use. Cool.

These dispensers were grouped up into three units installed side by side on top of a wire shelf. There was one unit for each of the three common cafeteria implements. Each unit was clearly labeled with what it contained. This is where I became the most amused by the whole utensil dispensing arrangement. I was so amused I took a picture of the dispensers. See?



Now, hopefully you are immediately seeing the amusement factor in all of this. The dispensers are labeled “forks”, “knives” and “multi-purpose spoons”. Apparently, forks and knives have one and only one purpose for their existence. Spoons? Now that’s a different story. You can do all kinds of stuff with spoons! Why, the possibilities are endless! Forks are for stabbing food. Knives are for cutting food. That seems pretty cut and dried, right? Hey! Maybe these utensil dispenser engineers have stumbled onto something. I decided to try to think of all the things I could do with a spoon. Here’s what I came up with (so far!)

1. Eating (OK – That one is obvious, but it’s so far-reaching! Think of all of the things you can eat with a spoon!)
2. Drinking very small portions of a beverage
3. Taking medicine (Now the hospital connection is becoming clear to me!)
4. Stirring stuff
5. Measuring recipe ingredients
6. Covering one eye for a vision test
7. Breathing on it and making it stick to the end of your nose to amuse a small child
8. Launching peas (You can do this with a fork, but it’s way more dangerous.)
9. Playing rhythm on your knees (You need two for this.)
10. Smearing cake icing (You can use a knife for this, but a big spoon works better.)
11. Gazing at your distorted reflection
12. Collecting (The decorative kind of course)
13. Tunneling out of prison
14. Making snowshoes for squirrels or other small animals
15. Hiding very small packages
16. Scraping out a jack-o-lantern


Quite a list, huh? And I’ve only just begun. Spoons are awesome! Spoons – the tool of the future! There’s no end to the utility of the ingenious, multi-purpose spoon! It will never be equaled in the annals of utensil history. Nothing will surpass its usefulness.

Except maybe…the SPORK!!!