Sunday, November 16th, 2003 - Bathroom Fork

Tonight I found a plastic fork lying in a bathroom stall. This was the most exciting thing that happened this weekend; that may sound sad for some, but for me, it's exciting. I began to comtemplate why a fork would end up in a bathroom since it's an unusual place for a fork to be.

The first picture that popped into my head was that white feather floating around in the opening sequence of Forrest Gump. This may be because of the fork's physical resemblance to the feather and also because the feather drifts around before it finally lands, allowing it the potential to end up in an odd place (maybe even a bathroom).

Next, I thought of the game "Ultimate Spoons." I must describe this for those of you who don't know what it is. The game Spoons is played by picking up and passing cards along in an attempt to gain 4 of a kind; once this is achieved, the winner picks up a spoon from the table, and everyone else follows suit. One person will end up without a spoon. In the Ultimate version, the spoons are placed in an adjoining or distant room, and the players all scramble up from the table once someone gets 4 of a kind. Some refer to this as "Full Contact Spoons" and is a dorm favorite.

With that in mind, I imagined 2 people playing Ultimate Spoons in their dorm room who had decided to place theirs in the bathroom (only using a fork instead of a spoon). It had to be only 2 people left playing since there was only one fork in the bathroom; there is always 1 less spoon than the number of players. I watched the bathroom door, waiting for 2 people to scramble in, pushing and elbowing each other to get at the fork. But they never came.

Then, I thought of the movie Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymoore. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, she has a line that goes something like, "You know what's a weird word? Fork. Isn't it weird?" That didn't help me figure out how the fork got to the bathroom, but it was funny because I totally agree with the writers of that script.

Finally, I thought of Easy Mac (a macaroni and cheese product common among college students). After I eat Easy Mac, I go to the bathroom to wash my dishes out in the sink. I imagined 2 different instances of someone doing the same. One accidentally dropped the fork after washing it, it bounced into a stall that was in use, so he just left it there. The other guy was a spork enthusiast, and, after realizing that he just ate with a fork, threw it down to the ground in fury, vowing to make sure that he uses a spork the next time that he eats Easy Mac.

Since I came up with an actual,(somewhat) probable solution to the problem, I stopped imagining the possibilities. That was really sad day, but I at least got to have some imaginatorial (a word?) fun first.

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