Sunday, August 10, 2008


MYSTERY SPOON

Received a left-handed spoon in the mail Friday. I didn’t buy it online or win it on eBay. It just came in the mail, carefully enfolded in patterned tissue paper, tucked into a baggie, swathed in several layers of bubble wrap and stuffed into a small manila envelope. It’s about six and a half inches long and looks streamlined, reminds me a bit of a 50s-era Pontiac hood ornament.
According to the envelope's return address, the spoon comes from someone named McCarthy in Eugene, Oregon.

I know no one named McCarthy from Eugene, Oregon.

I am grateful but puzzled. I am left-handed, so the spoon is not wholly inappropriate, but I have never felt the need or desire for left-handed cutlery. Still, it’s a pretty object, much prettier than the other left-handed spoons I found online, of which there are many: Jonathan’s Lazy Spoon comes in left and right-handed versions, as do a variety of Homecraft Roylan’s therapeutic and rehabilitative implements, also Kitchen Carver’s hand-hewn wooden pointed spoons, draining spoons, soup dippers, sauce spoons, jelly spoons, spatulas, spatula spoons and spoontulas (The differences between spatula spoons and spoontulas I leave to others.).

At Anything Left-handed, the left version of their jar spoon is six centimeters longer than the right-handed version. I’m not asking why; I assume that a righty who shops at an outfit called Anything Left-handed likes to live dangerously.

Mr. or Ms. McCarthy of Eugene, Oregon, I think of you now as Eugene McCarthy, which isn’t unfitting, as I’m sure only a fundamentally decent and really smart person, like Gene was, would send me a good-looking left-handed spoon out of the clear blue.

So many, many thanks. Who are you and why'd you send me a spoon?

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