He picked up the fork from the sink and noticed remnants of the prior night's eggplant parmesan. A tad of marina and bread crumbs clung to the void between the third and fourth prong. A simple second and a half rinse under the faucet would surely clear the utensil of the stubborn food but he'd recently adopted the principle of being adamant over not washing the dishes before washing the dishes and this was his first opportunity to exercise it. He would not give this fork the pleasure of being subjected to a sink rinse. Not today goddammit.
The fork represented one ninety-sixth of the dinnerware / tableware set they'd received as a wedding gift 7 years ago, a fourth of which consisted of various sized forks. What one couple needed with twenty-four forks he couldn't imagine. They kept twenty of them in the original box, packed somewhere downstairs, waiting to be unleashed in the event of some major entertaining or the birth of sextuplets, whichever came first. Whether or not four forks was truly enough for the two of them was a topic he'd considered bringing up on multiple occasions only to eventually dismiss it because A: there had to be something better to talk about at the time, right? and B: if she happened to agree that the four forks weren't enough he'd find himself in the precarious position of having to find the extra forks buried in the basement somewhere amidst and underneath boxes of empty CD cases and camping gear. That, quite simply, was out of the question. They'd have to make due with only four forks.
Spoons were an entirely different story. For some reason they kept eight spoons, four "big" ones and four "little" ones. A gun placed to the head couldn't guarantee a sound explanation to the purpose of one sized spoon versus the other but if he had to venture a guess he supposed the "big" spoons were meant for hearty soups and the "small" spoons were intended for desserts. At any rate, they used them interchangeably, paying no regard to spoon scoop size. As a result, they often found themselves in the situation of having to use spoons instead of forks - the previous night's eggplant parmesan episode being no exception. His wife used the last clean fork, the fork he currently held over the sink, and he used one of the "big" spoons. So, because either he or his wife (if only he could remember!) made the, at the time seemingly arbitrary, decision to keep only four forks in the primary silverware drawer and keep the rest under what might as well be twelve tons of boxes on a whole different floor of their home, they often ran out of clean forks and he had to display his chivalry time and time again by offering his wife use of the final clean fork and subject himself to eating numerous fork intended meals such as meat loaf, lasagna, salmon, taco salad, and eggplant parmesan with a fucking spoon.
With that he put the dirty, eggplant parm encrusted fork into the plastic bin on the bottom rack and slammed shut the dishwasher.
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