A Spoon's Tale

Let me get something straight with all of you. Forget what you know. Don’t believe the lies that you’ve heard from crazy old mother goose.

I’ll let you know, it’s true, the cow did in fact jump over the moon that night, but the rest is truly fabrication. You want the real story, I’ll tell you.

I was asleep in the drawer, as always, with all the other silverware. Suddenly I heard a ruckus coming from outside the confines of my drawer. The forks, always liking to poke their prongs into other people’s business, opened the drawer to see what was going on. 

In the kitchen, the cat and the dog were once again chasing each other around the table. This time, however, the cat had stolen the master’s fiddle and was tempting to break it. That cat was evil. He was always out to destroy the master’s things and then, as is always the case, the dog would be blamed. The dog refused to allow this to happen. The master cherished his fiddle. 

The chairs of the kitchen table had been thrown in all directions and the table shook violently as the cat and the dog nearly hit it over once, and again, and again. 

As this was occurring, a knife excitedly exclaimed, “She’s going to do it! She’s going to do it!” cutting straight to the point. 

Outside, the cow was once again rearing up to jump over the moon. This had been a nightly ordeal. Contrary to what the knife had exclaimed, the cow was just doing the math as to how she could accomplish it. She had been trying every night but had continually failed at achieving her goal. 

“I’ve got it this time da’lins!” the cow shouted to us. “The next time y’all sweet things gon’ see me, I gon’ have jumped right o’er that moon and down into history, young-ins!” 

I had tired of seeing her fail, and instead choose to watch as the dog took this interruption as an opportunity to steal the fiddle from the cat’s fluffy paws. 

The cat yelped and tried to get it back from the dog, but the dog was done with the game and swat him aside before releasing a yawp that was his way of showing that he found the whole event quite humorous. 

“She’s going to have to arch herself like she never has before!” laughed a bowl, still watching the cow. 

“And she’ll have to pop high into the sky like she’s never popped before!” admitted the corkscrew.

Finally, without another comment from the knife, trying to tell us the end of the tale before we could watch it happen for ourselves, the cow leapt! She flew so high that she seemed to vanish from our vision. To this day, I still am unsure how it all happened. If you ask crazy old Mother Goose, she says that she meant that it just appeared as though the cow jumped over the moon. You know, an optical allusion, but I’m telling you, she leapt straight into that sky until we could barely see her silhouette in the night sky cross over the moon, and vanish on the other side. 

We never did see the cow again after that night.

After the cow jumped, we all cheered. Even I joined in the fun. The dog played a jig on the fiddle and the silverware danced along. Even the cat put aside his feud with the dog and meowed along with his tune that he performed.

As the night and the celebration went on, I decided that it was time to me to retire. The plates had come to party a while before and, as was usual for the plates, acted superior to the rest of the flatware and silverware. They have always believed that since they are used the most often, that they are in turn the most important in the kitchen. They scoffed at the bowls when they first arrived, and sent them off to the cabinets. 

This is where my part of the story got misconstrued by good old Mother Goose. When I went to retire to the drawer, I slipped. The fall to the kitchen floor was horrifying, but luckily the cat caught me in one of his fluffy paws and set me gently to the ground. I didn’t dare ask him to do another favor for me and lift me back to my drawer, so I thought that I would find another way back.

As I tried to get back up to the counter, I heard a voice behind me. “Hey darling, what are you doing down on the floor? You do know that company only comes when a fork hits the floor, right?”

It was a plate. He seemed smug as he stood by me with his shining flat surface. “What do you want, plate?” I asked, bothered that I had to deal with such a dish.

“Why I wanted to help you,” he replied. “Such a useless utensil as yourself would obviously require my assistance.”

“Useless? Why am I useless?” I shouted.

“Why, because your abilities are halted beyond soup and possibly pudding. What would ever do if you were confronted by meat? I dare say that would be a horrifying occurrence.”

“You smug little…”

“I did not mean to make offense,” he cut in, “I only meant to be of assistance. That is all.”

“I do not need you assistance!” I shouted as I walked off toward the living room. I had been left there before by the master overnight. I though that I might as well set myself there for him to find me in the morning, making him believe that he had once again left me there.

However, the plate followed after me, persistently trying to apologize. I hated him more with every apology. 

After I finally got myself onto the master’s favorite chair and said goodnight to the plate, only then did he leave. The nerve of him. I was not disappointed when a month later the master accidentally dropped him to the floor and she was shattered and thrown away.

So in conclusion, it may not be as nice of a story as Mother Goose made it out to be, but believe me, the cat couldn’t play that fiddle if his life depended on it, and the dog only laughed due to his defeat of the cat, and lastly, by no means did I run away with the dish. I would never be caught associating myself with the likes of them, the bowl and I are close, but the dish, let hell freeze over before that happens. After all, shouldn’t you know, I’ve always been with the fork!