How I excised dessert forks from my life and from my memory

I was recently pondering why a standard silverware set has two sizes of spoons, but only one size each of forks and knives.

Googling around the idea, I discovered that commercially-available silverware sets do in fact have two sizes of forks - regular forks, and smaller dessert forks.

But why doesn't mine have those?

Then I remembered why I swore off dessert forks...

Once upon a time, back when we were small children, my sister was setting the table. She put a regular fork at every place setting except mine. At my place setting, she put a dessert fork, saying it's a smaller, baby fork because I'm a baby.

I didn't want to be a baby! I didn't want the humiliation of eating with a small baby fork when everyone else is eating with proper grownup forks!

So I stopped using them.

When one appeared at my place setting, I'd swap it out for a normal fork. When we were having cake, I'd use a normal fork. I never once touched or even thought about dessert forks.

 

Fastforward 15ish years.

I was preparing to move into my own apartment by appropriating kitchenware from my parents' kitchen. I took some forks and some knives and some big spoons and some little spoons, and didn't take any of the other irrelevant objects in the cutlery drawer.

I start out with what I appropriated from my parents, building my cutlery drawer over the years with a trip to Kitchen Stuff Plus whenever I ran out of something before the dishwasher got full. I never sought out new types of cutlery because I never had any reason to, just kept buying more of the same.

 

 

And after approximately 20 years of proceeding this way (and, perhaps, with the help of a head injury), my brain at some point deleted and overwrote the very existence of dessert forks.

All because one time my sister wanted to mock me via the medium of silverware.