Eating Salad with a Spoon (and Other Important Truths of Life)

When you hear the word "spoon," what's the first thing you think of? Soup? Pudding? Coffee? Peanut butter? Cottage cheese? Or do you think of the way you sleep next to someone you love? Or maybe you think of those little collectible spoons with the circle thingie at the end of the handle with a state flower or bird stamped on it. Or a ring ... I bet some of you remember spoon rings. Perhaps you think of your kids or grandkids and how stinking cute they are when they first start eating baby food off of a baby spoon with the rubbery stuff on it so it doesn't hurt their little baby gums ... so flipping adorable. My guess, however, is that eating salad doesn't even enter your mind when you hear the word "spoon" ... I mean seriously, how many people eat salad with a spoon, right?

Most days, my lunch hour consists of sitting at my desk eating whatever non-delicious food items I've chosen to bring from home. Yesterday, though, I went out to lunch with a young man I've worked with for the last few years ... a young man who's become a dear friend to me and whose two young daughters think I'm just about the coolest old gray-haired gal on the planet. I ordered a shrimp salad for lunch but did as I often do and only ate about half of it before asking the server to box up the rest for me so I could polish it off later in the afternoon. I do that a lot, you know, only eat half of my lunch at lunchtime and then eat the rest later ... sometimes several hours later if it's a busy day, as was the case yesterday.

Since I usually eat at my desk, I keep a supply of plastic forks, knives and spoons in the bottom drawer of the small filing cabinet that sits next to my desk. But yesterday when I opened the drawer to get a fork to eat my salad, I remembered that I had used my last fork the day before. I stared at my salad and thought for a moment that I should go downstairs to the kitchen and grab a handful of forks. Then I stared at the stack of work on my desk, thought about how much time it would take me to go to the kitchen and decided I would just eat my leftover salad with a spoon instead ... yep, that's what I decided alright. And in the spirit of being open, honest, real and transparent, it wasn't exactly the best decision I've ever made in regard to eating salad for lunch.

An hour and a half later, I finally finished eating the food that would have easily taken me only 10 minutes to consume had I not been too stubborn to admit that attempting to eat a bunch of big chunks of lettuce topped with shrimp, peanuts and tiny slivers of cucumber all slathered in vinegar and oil was a bad idea. I spent way more time trying to get the food to stay on the spoon long enough to get it from the container to my mouth than it would have taken me to get in my car, drive to Walmart, buy forks and drive back to work than it would have taken me to go downstairs to the kitchen and get a stupid plastic fork. On the positive side, however, I did sit at my desk and finish all my work while the battle of the spoon vs. salad took place ... gotta find the silver lining, you know.

So why am I writing about my long, drawn-out, time-consuming endeavor to eat my leftover salad yesterday? Because sometimes there's just nothing left to do but to accept and admit that I was wrong. I have a hard time with that, you know ... accepting and admitting that I'm wrong ... especially when it comes to people. Ask anyone who knows me well and they'll tell you that I'm the queen of second chances. Even when there may be a stack of evidence to prove otherwise, I want to believe in people ... I want to believe that people are who they say they are. I want to believe that if I just try hard enough or wait long enough or believe deeply enough, eating salad with a spoon will turn out to be as good of an idea as I thought it was. But sometimes ... sometimes, there's just nothing left to do but to accept and admit that I was wrong. 

Now where did I put my fork?