In the lovely bathroom of Sears House, a new resident had fully moved in. Perched atop the shelf below the mirror was a shiny, freshly cleaned spoon. It had stayed in this arrangement for a little over a month, greeting each bathroom-goer with a metallic glare in its eyes. It became an established facet of our bathroom.
I began to wonder how in the world this spoon had moved in—it can’t actually move and it surely had to have come from somewhere else, other than the bathroom. Thus, my CSI-level sleuthing began.
I employed several tactics in my investigative work. When I was in the bathroom at the same time as my neighbors, I would draw subtle attention to the spoon, ‘accidentally’ knocking it off the shelf and placing it back, watching my peers’ reaction to see if they would recognize it as their own. But after several employments of this method, I gained no further knowledge on the spoon’s origin.
Next, I moved on to thoroughly examining the spoon, attempting to understand where it could have come from. I photographed spoons from The Ratty for comparison and determined that the bathroom spoon was definitely not a pilfered Ratty spoon— my neighbors had manners.
It should be noted that this whole time I was also vastly impressed that none of my co-Sears residents had gotten fed up and thrown out the spoon, or at the very least that none of the custodial staff had done so. This must imply that they too were confused on the origins of the spoon.
Finally, one day I went into the bathroom with dish soap, sponge, and an oatmeal-encrusted mug in hand. As I ferociously scrubbed the dried oat kernels out of my mug, the slightly sweet and slightly nauseating aroma of Palmolive crept up into my (for once) un-stuffed nose. In some weird synesthesia-esque moment, I immediately recalled a fateful day about a month prior: I had finished eating a fairly mediocre bowl of spazzy college girl quality mac and cheese, and had gone to the bathroom to wash my plastic bowl (sorry CA’s!!), brush my teeth, and clean my spoon. Suddenly it dawned on me: the obnoxious person who had left their spoon in the bathroom for over a month was me! In the midst of brushing my teeth, I entirely spaced and left my precious spoon on the bathroom ledge! I’m so sorry to have abandoned you, dear spoon.
Evidently, I am maybe ‘the worst.’ If nothing else, let this serve as a warning to others to reign in their judgments. You’re probably not all that great either—you, like, me could be ‘the worst.’ Don’t leave your spoons out!
