Stick a spork in 2023
Rob Long
A spoon that has little fork-like tines on the end is called, by most normal people, a “spork,” which I think we can all agree is a terrible-sounding word.
At best, the word “spork” sounds awkward and unsophisticated, a utensil used in institutional cafeterias and bus station snack bars. At worst, it sounds like some kind of bumpy skin growth. “His face was covered with oozing, flame-red sporks.” That sort of thing.
There is another word for spork, by the way. If you had a certain kind of childhood, you know to call a spork by its proper name, which is “runcible spoon.” But even if you didn’t, it’s time we all brought “runcible spoon” back into circulation. I know we all have lofty resolutions and plans for 2024, but mine is refreshingly specific and small-bore. I want to resurrect the “runcible spoon.”
It just sounds better, don’t you think? It’s got a vaguely stuffy Downton Abbey vibe to it but it also sounds jaunty and fun. You won’t find a runcible spoon in a state-run house of corrections.
The term was invented by the poet Edward Lear, and makes its most popular appearance in his poem “The Owl and the Pussycat,” when the newly-married Owl and Pussycat enjoy a wedding feast of “mince, and slices of quince, / Which they ate with a runcible spoon / And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand / They danced by the light of the moon….”
When Lear wrote those lines, no one knew what a runcible spoon was. “Runcible” is a made-up word, totally meaningless. But it’s a lot more poetic than the alternative. Consider that the Owl and the Pussycat could have dined on “mince, and slices of quince, / Which they ate with a spork / And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand / They danced to the music of Bjork….”
Or I guess they could have feasted on “mince, and slices of quince, / Which they ate with two silver sporks / And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand / They looked like a couple of dorks.”
The only problem, in fact, with upgrading the term is that when you ask someone to hand me the runcible spoon or ask the person at the Popeyes counter for a few more runcible spoons to go with your beans and rice, they will think that you’re an insufferable jerk.
“Why do you have to be so difficult about everything?” a friend of mine shouted after I had asked the person at the local bodega if they had any runcible spoons to go with their takeout fruit salad. The guy at the bodega had looked at me blankly for a few minutes as I tried to describe what a runcible spoon is — You know, that thing, that spoon, with the tines? Little plastic spoon kind of thing, with the points? You know?
I had even tried to use some Spanish — cuchara? Con, you know, points? — which turned out was useless because the guy’s name is almost entirely made up of consonants, some of them from an unknown and totally non-Spanish alphabet. But it wasn’t until I mimed both spooning and forking that he looked at me in the way he looks at many of the elderly and insane customers he deals with in the neighborhood and said, “Spork? You want spork?”
“Yes!” my friend barked, and then glared at me. And as the bodega owner put a few flimsy-looking sporks — excuse me, runcible spoons — into my bag, I tried to explain to him that my mission for 2024 was to remind people that there’s a nicer way to say “spork.”
There’s a nicer way to say most of the things we say, to be honest. There’s a nicer way to tell people you’d like them to speak at a lower volume. There’s a nicer way to tell people that they need to step well into the subway car when entering instead of blocking the door. There’s a nicer way to tell someone that you don’t really want to hear about their troubles at work, where their kids are going to college, how they lost 10 pounds, what might happen in American presidential politics over the next 10 months, and what happens when they eat dairy.
But for now, I’m thinking small. It’s a runcible spoon. The rest can wait.
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Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.