Emily Sandberg Discusses "Spoon"
by Fringe Magazine • 11.14.2011This week we’re pleased to offer “Spoon,“ inventive new flash fiction from Emily Sandberg. Below, Emily talks about the story’s inception, her mother’s reaction, and what is lost as spoon-pens become a thing of the past.
I don’t know who first came up with the idea of taping a piece of plastic cutlery to a pen, but I suppose I should thank him or her or them—if it was a group effort—for making this story possible. It’s such a great low-tech solution that I spent longer than I’m willing to admit wondering what else it could be applied to; what else might someone not want to part with?
A plastic spoon taped to a pen may soon become a thing of the past. They now have those machines at many check-outs where you sign on a screen with a stylus. I don’t like those machines. Too often the screen is scratched or not as responsive as paper is to pen so that my name doesn’t look right when I sign it but instead looks misspelled or as if someone else wrote it, which is disturbing since my name is the one thing I can always, or at least usually, count on getting right the first time. I’m not looking forward to when the last spoon-pen inevitably gets replaced by more sophisticated technology; I know I’ll get over it and be able to move on with my life, but for now I’m just glad they still exist in some places.
I let my mother read “Spoon” not so long ago. A few weeks later I received a package from her in the mail; inside was a pen with a plastic spoon taped to it that she said she’d found at a butcher shop in my hometown; she knew I’d appreciate it as soon as she saw it and had slipped it into her purse when no one was looking, which is sort of funny, though maybe only because it wasn’t my pen that got stolen.
Great story! Actually I felt guilty about stealing a spoon from the butcher and was sure someone was watching me. So I broke down and asked if I could have it!
Mom
Great. Just great. I’m so happy to see my personal life make it to the big blog-o-zine. Glad our relationship provided you—in what I only now realize was, for you, 19 months of tepid indifference wrapped in deceit! I am tickled that our long-time love affair has provided you with nothing more than a genetically-damaged metaphorical acorn from which you cultivated this distortion: this roman-a-clef cum public humiliation. You told me I was the “love of my life” (your words).
Wounded but emboldened buy my own naivety, I set forth, for your readers, a re-statement of facts (or, if not facts, statement that are within spitting distance of the truth)—
1) You were my Mrs. Spoon.
2) I your Mr. Pickles.
3) The spoon was your Annabel Leigh. For me it was “Ecstasy and Rohypnol” meets Herb Alpert’s Whip Cream and Other Delights by way of Pink Flamingos. It was intoxicating, erotic, and wildly nauseating. I felt dirty. Impressions of oversized cutlery continue to decorate my torso two year’s on.
5) As for your mother….
She was your Claire. You were her Humbert. And I was, for you both, your dear,young Dolores.
Hey friends, always remember, your college bookstore should be
the last option when you sell your textbooks, as they will
undoubtedly offer you the lowest price around. So stop by our site,
bookmark it and send it to your friends so that you can all compare
book
prices and receive the highest offers and best service possible!