A long, long time ago, during my formative years, I, as nearly everyone else, learned something called “life skills.” Being a young child of perhaps three-years of age, I recall my parents instilling those life skills into my little brain of mush.
I already conquered walking upright, the bathroom drill, mastering shapes and colors, manners for being in the proximity of others, speaking distinctively, and reading. Now I was working on even more important things such as household behavior.
Whether at home or in a home belonging to someone else, I was taught a different, additional set of skills that answer many questions about you of outsiders and strangers, alike.
Picking up anything you dropped, being seen but not heard, not making a fuss, no shouting, acting like a miniature adult, plus using words such as “please” and “thank you” and a polite address such as Mrs. and Mr.; adults were not merely big kids – they were altogether different.
To calm and distract me, I recall my Mother reaching into her purse to retrieve a small handful of ‘green army men.’ Green army men, in case you’re unaware, were little plastic soldiers that came in a variety of different poses. And, they were green.
There were no flesh color differences, but they carried an array of weapons to include rifles, machine guns, mortars, and hand grenades, all very necessary to complete whatever task a three-year old was battling on the floor at the time. What a great distraction from boring stranger talk. But I digress.
In any case, these life skills continued to expand and evolve into more voluminous, as well as complex, abilities not readily discernible at that time.
Bear in mind, way back when, America wasn’t dealing with teachers trying to change the sex of children, getting blacks to hate whites, getting whites to hate blacks, obtaining free intravenous drugs from the government, wearing useless N-95 masks under threat of prison, contending with violent street thugs, carjackings, random robberies and shootings by savages, and threat of a nuclear war. I was still learning new skills.
Our small family didn’t come from money; we earned every penny we spent while valuing what we owned instead of lusting for what we didn’t have.
Because we were less-than-wealthy we didn’t eat out much. Whatever was available in a restaurant was equally available at home. But before I was allowed to join my parents in a restaurant, I needed another life skill.
Watching television lately has been quite eye-opening for me. I have noticed that not everyone in America possesses the same life skills I have. Madison Avenue has long-been known as America’s advertising hub. Powerful “ad men” have been guiding us – often unwittingly – through our daily routines with clever advertising touting products ‘we can’t live without.’
Sport utility vehicles, swimming pools, craft beers, the latest fashions, cigarettes, vacation cruises, as well as pharmaceuticals, are all available for consumption, compliments of Madison Avenue, to encourage us to buy stuff we can’t live without.
Many of those Madison Avenue products involve food; not just any food, but food that requires tools.
Short of being a feral animal, everyone should know how to use these eating tools which include spoons, forks, and knives. Wealth didn’t matter, nor did optics, during my formative years. Using eating utensils, on the other hand, did.
This etiquette speed bump precluded me – and a few years later, my younger sister – from being seen in public, eating.
The impetus for this essay was my seeing food product ads on television for cereal, soup, and other nutritious edibles, with actors using flatware in an amateurish way. Being groomed to fit neatly into civilized society, I thought the ad men involved would be more attentive to their product presentation.
Clearly I was mistaken. An interweb search of “proper way to hold a fork” returned an amazing number of results – something I was not expecting.
There are pictures, story lines, videos, among the volumes of instructive writings and explanations of proper ways to introduce sustenance to ones mouth.
Terms such as “shovel” and “cave man” appear quite often when referring to moving the dinner or salad fork from the plate.
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| An example of the inappropriate "shovel hold" |
A big deal? In a word, YES. Evidently, roughly 40% of America’s population are unaware of the correct use of a tool we use several times every day, throughout our lives. That isn’t necessarily important, but when Madison Avenue-types regularly show ape-man style shoveling of food to consumers, we can deduce at least a few ad men fall into that 40%. And that’s critical.
My search for validation didn’t end there. It seems as though just as important as forks – everything from salad, dinner, dessert, seafood, asparagus, bread, cheese, carving, serving, and fish forks, can all be viewed there while appropriate grips are also available for scrutiny, FYI.
But also contained therein are references to the operation of an accompanying table knife. For those readers in Canada who are terrified of any weapon, hence the elimination of dangerous firearms, a table knife is a utensil that normally accompanies dinner forks at the table.
And those deadly weapons of war – cleverly hidden in the form of butter knives, according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – may have all been confiscated for public safety, by now. Once again, I digress.
The world is currently chock full o’ influencers who attempt to do just that: influence. They urge followers to wear, eat, vacation, drive, apply makeup, exercise, vote, even sleep, certain ways, all for the benefit of clicks and likes.
I believe it is time to encourage Americans to properly hold forks while dining. They may think they’re smart, however they prove otherwise once they begin a meal. Chew on that.
