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Overeaters Oblivious

By David Feela

Now that the holidays are over - the BIG eating holidays, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and those solid weeks of finishing off leftovers - we thought we'd be able to have a normal meal again as people are supposed to, at a restaurant, dining instead of cooking. We decided on a little buffet that friends recommended.

And it was true, the mashed potatoes, peas, fried chicken, and meat loaf looked a little better than ordinary, so we didn't hesitate to fork over our money to the friendly buffet cashier.

"It looks like you're ready to feed an army," I remarked.

"Nobody goes away hungry," the cashier replied.

We paid for the All-You-Can-Eat dinner special, picked up a clean plate, and started heaping it with various entrees.

"These sure are unusual serving spoons," Pam remarked.

"Yeah, they're pretty unusual," I replied, but I was concentrating on the lasagna.

Having maximized the surface of the plate by arranging layers for each of the seven food groups, we sat down at our table and began to eat. We'd been raised in the Midwest and so the lesson of eating properly and eating all that was on our plate constituted a way of life. Little conversation transpired, except for brief comments like, Try this, or Yum, or a simple jab with a knife - communication designed to enhance the eating process and not lead toward the discussion of serious ideas.

We excavated our way through the seven layers until, as our parents had instructed many times over, we had cleaned our plates.

"I think I'll go back for a little more of that pudding," I said.

"The roast beef looked tender," Pam replied.

We returned to the buffet line, picked up new plates, and as is the habit in buffet lines, intended to take less food on this second trip. But this was no ordinary buffet line. The serving spoons were indeed unusual. As spoons, the handles were specially shaped to comfortably fit the hand, and the spoons themselves were deep and allowed for a heaping portion to be scooped every time. In fact, these spoons would not allow themselves to be used in a dainty, petite manner. If a customer wanted only one cherry tomato to garnish the plate, the spoons refused to discriminate: they simply lunged into the food and came up with an impressive quantity of vegetables.

We had never handled spoons like these and so we came away from the line holding plates heaped with as much food as on our first trip through the line. Naturally, as people raised in Midwest are taught, we felt obliged to eat everything on our plates.

"A little dessert would be nice," Pam said.

"I might try one more spoon of that pudding," I replied.

We returned to the buffet line, got new plates, and as we walked past the main entries the spoons went wild, jumping from the trays and heaping our plates with generous portions of the same food we'd already eaten twice.

"They're sure not skimpy here," I said.

"It's a pretty good value," Pam replied.

Of course, we ate everything on our plates and pushed them toward the center of the table, convinced we'd eaten all we could eat and that we'd certainly gotten our money's worth. But the spoons levitated in the air and carried heaping servings of steaming food directly to our table. Nothing could be done except to eat what was before us, and so we reluctantly picked up our forks and began to clear our plates.

This time, however, the spoons refused to let our plates be emptied, and the food kept coming, spoon after spoon, and no matter how fast or slow we chewed, the spoons kept pace.

"I'm getting a little full," Pam remarked.

"Yeah, me too," I replied, or rather, mumbled with a mouthful.

But we kept eating, because people were starving all over the world, and the spoons knew only their job of serving the hungry.