Astonishing Flatware

It’s all Tim Tunes fault. I can’t say the words, “plastic silverware,” anymore. I have a hard enough time writing it.

Prior to going to work for Jordan Marsh, Tim’s greatest accomplishments were in the fields of tormenting kittens, and alphabet belching. (Tim could belch the alphabet through M on one swig of store brand soda. Unfortunately FLAB – the Federated League of Alphabet Belchers only accepted entries from name-brand soda belching. We were both too cheap to find out if he could make the big time.)

Jordan Marsh (which being a New England-based upscale retailer should properly be pronounced without saying either “r,”) changed all that. Tim handed in an application to avoid losing unemployment benefits. Though he was in jeans and Velcro fastened sneakers, he wore a mostly clean tie and a collared (though untucked) shirt to the interview.

They put him in the fine china and silver department.

Tim’s supervisor, Mercedez de la Roi, Comptessa de Madrid, did her best to transform Tim Tune into a classy guy. I have to admit – she was a diminutive well-coiffed miracle worker. Within a week, Tim was swigging his no-name soda from a tea cup and belching the alphabet in French. He was also correcting my crudities.

“Hey Tim, did the delivery guy give us any silverware? All of mine has too much mold to tell the forks from the spoons.”

“Any what?”

“Any silverware.”

“Why would he give us silverware? A single fork would cost more than the whole order.”

At this point, Tim resumed his belching from P /pe/ pé  to Z /zɛd/ zède .

“I don’t mean silver, silverware. I mean plastic silverware.”

Tim, his pinky extended from his tea cup, tilted his head back so he could look down his nose at me. “There is no such thing as plastic silverware,” he said.

“Then I live in a mythological world,” I replied, “because last time I ate meat-flavored fried rice, I used such a non-existent object.”

“What you used,” Tim belched in a French accent, “was flatware.”

“Plastic forks aren’t flat.”

“Neither are they silver,” said Tim, primly using his shirt to wipe belch expectorant from his saucer.

Then I saw the bottle. Tim was drinking Pepsi – real Pepsi, not Value Shop brand Poopsi-Cola, but the genuine carmel-colored article. At that moment I realized that my good friend had left the fraternity of slob-hood and moved on to that strata of personages I had only been exposed to on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

“So did he give us any flatware?” I asked.

Tim handed me a slightly soiled white plastic fork while he unwrapped another that was sealed in a bag with Chinese characters on it.

I took the soiled fork and didn’t say a thing.

It’s hard to argue with class.

Warning!  This video might be too classy for some people.