THE TEASPOON
On a small hill there was a big house, and in the big house was a fancy dining room, and in the dining room was a long table, and on the table there was a spoon. A teaspoon, in fact.
Now this teaspoon was very proud of her place on the table. She delighted in her ability to measure out the exact amount of sugar to drop into the grandmother’s cup of tea, and she loved the way her concave scoop made perfect swirling eddies in the tea, to mix the sugar in thoroughly. The teaspoon was content with her role in life, and she was happy to be of service.
Until one day she was set next to a wicked steak knife. She introduced herself to him pleasantly, but he sneered at her and said, “look at you, so small and round and blunt! What good are you?” And so she told him about how she measured out the sugar, and how she mixed it into the tea. “And,” she said, “As for being small, well, I’m quite happy to be dainty.”
“Dainty?! Hah!” the steak knife replied, “with that bulging protrusion of yours? You don’t even lie flat on the table like a proper piece of silverware. Your hump makes you wobbly and unstable!” And he turned away and began eyeing up the butter knife.
The teaspoon was cut to the quick. No one had ever spoken to her that way before, and no one had ever suggested that she had a negative side. She was always so pleased with what she could do that she never thought about what she couldn’t do, or what she did badly.
But now every time she was dipped into the sugar bowl she didn’t think about the sweet crystals she was scooping up, but the ones she was thrusting aside with her hump. And when she stirred the tea she began to worry that her convex side was creating counter-eddies that cancelled out all the good eddies from her concave side.
And the final straw came when she was set before the young son of the house and he accidentally put his water glass down on her edge and she flipped up and sailed end over end across the table and landed in the grandmother’s mashed potatoes. How undignified and decidedly un-dainty.
So she went to the steak knife and said, “You were right! What can I do? How do I get rid of this awful protrusion?”
“Well,” he answered, “every now and then I get taken down to the basement to be sharpened. There’s a grinder down there, and I suppose he’d be able to remove that hump of yours for you.”
So that night she crept down to the basement, found the grinder and asked him to help her. He said, “I will, if you could help me. I’m in desperate need of some oil.” So the spoon found the tin of oil, pried off the lid, and scooped out some of the liquid. Then she returned to the grinder and poured it exactly where it was needed. “Hah!” she thought, “let’s see the steak knife do that!”
“Ahh, thank you,” said the grinder, “I feel much better! Now, I think I can get rid of your hump, but you’ll have to hold still. It may hurt a bit,” She nodded bravely, and moved closer, and he began to grind away the metal on her reverse side.
It did hurt. Incredibly. And she flinched at the sight of those little specks of silver flying off all around her. But she yearned to get rid of the pushy, protruding, unstable side of herself, and so she held still. And after a bit it all went numb and she didn’t feel anything at all.
“Okay, that’s it, you’re done” the grinder said, and the spoon rushed back upstairs, feeling lighter both physically and emotionally. She was so excited to test her new stability that she laid herself on the table and tried rocking back and forth. Nothing. She was as sturdy as any steak knife; not about to go flipping through the air. She was so relieved she fell asleep right there on the table.
The next morning the teaspoon felt herself being lifted up by the grandmother, and dipped into the sugar bowl. This was the test of her new self. And she passed! She slipped into the heap of sugar without pushing aside any grains at all. But her success – and her happiness – were short lived. As she was lifted up, she felt all the crystals slide through her; she couldn’t hold on to any of them. Then she was dunked into the teacup and stirred around, but the liquid hardly made a ripple, let alone an eddy. What was going on?!
She felt herself being lifted out of the cup and carried into the kitchen and then thrown onto the countertop as the grandmother dug in the silverware drawer for another spoon, and took it back into the dining room.
The teaspoon shook herself, bewildered. She pulled herself up in front of the toaster and looked at her reflection in its chrome side. She saw a thin metal rim around where her scoop used to be, with nothing inside of it but air. And as she turned back and forth in front of the toaster she realized what she had done. She saw that her negative side and her positive side were just two halves of the same shape, and that by getting rid of one she had destroyed the other.
She was crushed. What good was a spoon without a scoop? Was a spoon really still a spoon if it wasn’t able to lift and hold things? No, she decided, she wasn’t. And what was left for a spoon who wasn’t a spoon? Nothing.
She resolved to end it all. She dragged herself over to the sink, and looked down at the tub of hot soapy water sitting there, and she hurled herself into it.
No sooner had she hit the bottom then she was fished out by the father of the house, who was doing the breakfast dishes. She felt herself lifted up in front of his face, and turned back and forth. And then she felt a light breeze blowing through her, and out in front of her appeared a shiny, thin, delicate bubble that floated away over the sink, and then bumped into the wall, and popped.
She found herself being dropped into a cup, with some soapy water poured on top, and handed to the man's young son. He carried her out into the sunshine, and held her up in the bright air, and blew. And from the empty space within her came streams of shining bubbles that floated up and out into the world.
Andrea Blumberg
Copyright © Andrea Blumberg 2016