Idle Moments With A Fork
Last week, Gidman and I were sitting in the lunch room on a burned-out Friday, mindlessly chewing our ‘conveniently available work-site cafeteria so you don’t have to leave the site’ food, when I started looking at a plastic fork, manufactured by the Sunshine Corporation.
So we started talking forks.
Look at the design and variety of plastic forks. There are textured patterns on the handle. There are ridges, indents or other attributes of the shaft. The tines have a particular curvature, and four seems to be the preferred number. A myriad of manufactures mold the things in mind-boggling quantities, load them on huge freighters, set them afloat for a month, and truck or rail them all over the country so you can buy five times as many as you need for ninety-nine cents – and they still
make a profit.
Are there R&D people sitting around somewhere, comparing fork models, or speculating on fork innovation? Are there fork-engineering geeks who can eye a fork and tell you the manufacturer, the year and the technique? “Oh yeah, the ’86 General Plastics model. Check out the heft. That was before the Great Cost Cutting Frenzy of ’89. You’ll never see that quality again.”
I can’t help but wonder now. I think I’ll make some phone calls and see what kind of answers I get.
Filed under: Grab Bag
Not that anyone really cares, but it was not the Sunshine Corporation, but rather it was Sweetheart. (For a free catalog, clic here.) Sweetheart is apparently a subsidiary of SoloCup.
Now quit forking around and get to work.
C
In the interest of giving equal time to those forks of diverse cultures, I have provided a list of links to hopefully assuage any fears of prejudice toward the forks whose orientation tends away from the mainstream.
The Spork is probably the most well-known of the fork cousins. In fact, I wonder if it could even be classified as a minority. For those who don’t know, the Spork is a combined Spoon and Fork. Sometimes it is referred to as a Froon, but this is considered vulgar in the fork community.
An attempt to hybrid the knife and fork has resulted in the marginally successful Knork.
The Australians, not to be out-done, combined all three familiar table utensils into a single multi-functional tool. There is a lot of confusion between a Splayd and a Spork. The Spork is similar but does not have the cutting edge and generally has less of a fork than a Splayd. Notice that it comes with it’s own jewelry case that can hold a set of eight. This site has an interesting caption under the picture of the Splayd. The Splayd is most often used for deserts. So, it’s a weapon, maybe?
The mythical world brings us the Runcible Spoon. Technically, it’s not a spoon at all but rather a three pronged fork–at least according to some. This probably would have pleased Mr. Lear to no end. Apparently, however, the existence of a true runcible spoon is subject to debate.
And finally, though not a fork at all, the chopsticks can be viewed as a sort of fork coming from your hands. Okay, I’m reaching.
Enjoy.
Yep folks, I married him. You can send sympathy messages to missdianew@charter.net
I think you have too much time on your hands. Oh and to the wife… I was there and it was NOT a shot gun wedding.