I woke up — not early (I don’t do early), but still in the morning. The sun was shining brilliantly and I could see, from the slight sway of the tree branches, that there was a breeze. Stepping closer to the window, I raised the shades little higher and peered out at my newly mowed side yard, appreciating the lush green. At the very corner of my view I noticed a little patch of white… flowers? I couldn’t really tell from that angle, but whatever it was hadn’t been there the previous day.
I went into my daughter’s room, hoping to get a better view from her window. She was still in bed, but my tripping over the scattered debris on her floor (with the attendant expletives) awakened her.
“What are you doing??” she asked, in somewhat hostile tones.
“Trying to see what’s in our yard. There are some white things that I can’t figure out. I thought I might see better from this window.”
In fact, the view from her window did show a wider view of the white objects. There were a lot of them. In fact, they spread across much of our side yard and appeared to extend to the front yard also. Switching to yet another window, I could see that they covered much of the front yard as well, flanking our curved, slate walkway.
“Honey, come look at this. What do you think it is? It looks like white sticks or something. Do you think the lawn fairies were here?” Lawn fairies is the name we’ve given, affectionately, to the yard service we use. “Maybe they’re aerating the yard.”
Grumbling, she got up and looked outside. “Oh.” she said, “We’ve been forked.”
“Excuse me?”
“Forked. You know. Like plastic forks. I mean, there are spoons and knives also, but it’s called forking. It’s… you know, a prank. Like toilet papering the bushes or writing in soap on your car.”
So now I’ve been forked. I’m assuming that whomever did it isn’t making a metaphorical statement. Whatever. It’s a lot of plastic. Looks kind of like a little cutlery graveyard.
We ended up removing a good 3 pounds of plastic eating utensils from our lawn — but not for a couple of days because it started raining before we got around to it. Until we did, I had to keep explaining our yard to the various people who came by: the mailman, FedEx, the cable guy… I’m not sure why I bothered. Only one of them even noticed that my yard had anything odd in it.
Forking. My world continues to expand.
Is this an American thing? It’s sort of funny but at the same time, loving my garden the way I do and despising people who litter anything anywhere, I think it’s pretty pathetic as well.
Small minds?
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I never heard of it before, but my daughter clearly had. I’ve heard of (and experienced) toiletpapering and the soap writing, but this was a new one. It actually was funny, in an annoying sort of way. Did aerate the lawn a little bit…
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This is new to me too, and you have to admit it pretty forking funny.
Someone had to say it.
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I love it and wish I had thought of it myself, and I agree with Pat Sweet that it is pretty forking funny. I’m telling Josie just in case she doesn’t know. I’m sure she’ll be up for it at school as she’s always looking for a good prank. I’m also sure that if we had been forked in this neighborhood we would be cited for some violation before I even knew I had been forked. I love Rachel’s casual reply.
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Remember when J & R glued quarters to the sidewalk in CP and watched the college students try to pick them up? That one still makes me laugh.
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Makes mowing the lawn VERY difficult
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