The Fork Incident

When I was twelve my mother remarried and three children became six with the addition of two step-brothers and a step-sister. They lived with their mother during the school year but came to stay with us during the summers and some holidays. During one visit, when my step-brother, Mike, and I were both 13, something happened that came to be known as “The Fork Incident”. This happened 45 years ago, but deserves the re-telling of my first-hand version, for over the years the incident has gained the status of folklore and the truth of it all has been lost to the effects of time…

One night for dinner my mother served pork chops, a very rare treat, indeed. Somehow as we all consumed the last bites of our share of this delicacy, we simultaneously noticed that there was one last, extra chop on the platter. It never occurred to most of us that there was the slightest possibility we would get some of it, but Mike, not one to ever be left out of a good thing, poised his fork, ready for a chance to go for it. His dad saw the greediness in his eyes and readied his own fork to go for it. There was a brief moment of stand-off with their eyes, the rest of us watching, wide-eyed with anticipation, we’d never seen an actual “duel to the death” before. Then, in an instant, forks flew, Mike stabbing the chop and Dad stabbing Mike’s hand!

This is where things get fuzzy; some story-tellers say that the fork didn’t even break the skin, others insist that Mike bled profusely. As I recall, of course I could be wrong, the fork punctured the skin and a few drops of blood came to the surface and oozed out. There are no scars, physically anyway, on Mike and no one seems to remember what happened to the chop; I daresay no one wanted it after that…

So if you hear a story of “The Fork Incident”, and there are many (even the half-brother and sisters born after the fact have their own versions), take it with a grain of salt. Kirby, the family’s quintessential teller of tall tales, has embellished his version so much over the years that no one can top his story in which Mike dies…