MadMania

As I age and mature I find myself thinking about, for birthday and Christmas, fewer impractical extravagances (pirate hat, Tesla coil) and more practical needs (debt reduction, flatware).

The side effect is that I am becoming boring.

Before you no doubt object, remember that I have mentioned ‘flatware’ twice already.

I used to be largely content to eat with most any utensil of most any quality of workmanship. It’s not that I couldn’t tell the difference between a finely crafted furcated utensil and some piece of barely-usable piece of junk hastily stamped out of cheap metal. But as I get older I find myself disliking most of the forks in our home.

Shortly after we were married Heather and I purchased a very nice set of flatware. They were thin, but they were sturdy and, more importantly, had smooth edges. For some reason, every single implement from this set has disappeared–save two knives. I blame the children.

Since then we have somehow acquired some unpleasant forks from the Ugly Flatware collection. Most utensils of even the lowest quality are relatively smooth, but cheap forks, and their tines in particular, have a rather unpleasant feel to their edges.

When I said I dislike most of the forks in the house, the reason is that I have a couple of forks that do not belong to me; they may belong to you. I use them when we eat communal meals, rushing to the kitchen to secure fork preference by making some pretense of helping cook, or appearing to be magnanimous and doing the dishes.

My friend Kaleb has some amazing flatware; all of the utensils are heavy enough to murder someone with. I don’t know why my standard of an object’s sturdiness is measured by the capacity to successfully commit murder with said object. I used to work with a guy who measured everything by its capacity to destroy a tree; at the time we worked in a woodworking factory.

Anyway.

Why, you are no doubt asking, don’t you just go buy some nice flatware if it means that darned much to you? Let me show you something:

Maturity is Inversely Proportional to Fun
Fun is Directly Proportional to Excitement
Excitement is Inversely Proportional to Boringness
Boringness is Directly Proportional to Maturity

therefore

Maturity and Boringness are the mortal enemies of Fun and Excitement

It’s sad but true. Observe:

Fun:

• New X-Box 360
• Collector’s edition of Skyrim
• Skipping work
• Drinking Mountain Dew
• Skipping work to stay home drinking Mountain Dew while playing your collector’s edition of Skyrim on your new X-Box 360