Smile-breaks
Forks and Computers
If you look at a fork, it's actually quite nice. No instruction manual. No reset button. No dials or moving parts. Did I say quite nice? Make that very nice. And a fork is obedient, resting there beside your plate. Well-mannered.
"Well, it's only a fork," you say. "It's not like it's a computer or something."
No, but it can handle an unlimited array of menus and has the capacity for more bytes—make that bites—than any computer could ever hope to have. So I think we should appreciate our forks. Especially as we lick the last vestiges of maple syrup from the tines.
Another nice feature of the fork is its timeless design. With no upgrades to purchase and install, one fork will last a lifetime. Some have been known to last two or three lifetimes, having been passed down from generation to generation.
As you pick up your fork tonight, listen. You can hear the conversation going on around you, because your fork makes no noise. Silently it sits beside the knife and spoon, patiently waiting as you tell your guests about the latest crisis at the office, or thrill them with tales of your adventures during last week's guided tour of Old Town.
Your guests might stifle a yawn or two, look hopefully toward the front door, or rudely interrupt by passing the broccoli, but your fork rests politely between your fingers, never complaining - always at the ready.
Across the table three forks graciously feed your guests, keeping them awake and preventing them from interrupting you. As the clock strikes eight, a teaspoon at the end of the table tinkles charmingly against a china cup filled with strong, dark coffee, reminding you this guest has sipped his way through four cups of the brew, and maybe—just maybe—it's time for you to wind up your fascinating, but lengthy, monologue.
"Oh, my! Have I been talking all this time?" Your fork clatters to the table as everyone chimes in, "Oh, but your story was so interesting. It seems as if we just sat down."
Your fork knows better. But it's not a computer. It can't make that little "ding" sound and flash a message across your plate: "You have just performed an inconsiderate operation. Story exceeds byte capacity. Log off immediately." You're on your own when it comes to forks. They can't help you.
So where do we go from here? Obviously we've come to a fork in the road. Do we stoop over and pick it up? Or do we step over it and continue on our way?
Well, as the politician would say, "That depends." And he would hold his finger up to the wind to determine if the fork was valuable. If it was registered. To vote, that is. Does it have friends who vote? Is it part of a coalition? Not being sure, he would call in the pollsters before making a decision.
But if you're not a politician, you just pick up the fork, brush it off, and stick it in your pocket. Wouldn't want someone to trip over it, or a small child to put it in his mouth and get all those germs. If you have your laptop with you, you might take a minute to log onto the internet to see if anyone out there's lost a fork. Maybe they'll trade you a lottery ticket for it.
When you think about it, a lottery ticket is much like a fork. No instruction manual. No reset button. But it does require weekly upgrades. So that's a disadvantage. Except that it gets you out of the house, away from that computer, into the vibrant, multi-dimensional real world, where live human beings meet and interact without benefit of websites or e-mail.
Which is more than a fork does. A fork tends to keep you inside at the table a little longer than you'd planned. Especially the dessert fork. That one's hard to resist. The shortened tines indicate you should take smaller bites in order to savor every tiny morsel of this sweet ending to your repast before returning to the complications of your PC, or VCR, or the work you brought home from the office.
Bet you never thought of a fork that way. I never did either. But Spiegel put a simple fork with a crimson napkin between its tines on the cover of the fall catalogue and that just got me to thinking.
Of all the household appliances and gadgets between the covers of the catalogue, someone chose a fork to tempt our consumer tastes. A fork. A work of art. A tool of necessity. Well, almost necessary. I guess we could do without it, but then we'd need a lot more of those crimson napkins.
They could have put a computer on the cover, those people at Spiegel, but somehow I think that would have been disturbing. For most of us, computers raise conflicting emotions—the primary one being frustration.
No, I believe the fork was a wise choice. A calming influence on the harried shopper. A symbol of timelessness and good taste. A symbol of satisfaction after many happy bytes - make that bites. A reminder that when you come to a fork in the road, it's best to pick it up and keep going.
