The Serious Mirth Society

In the beginning, people ate with their hands.

At some point, they discovered that sticks could be helpful for transferring food to their mouths. Eventually, they realized that sticks with wider, curvier ends helped even more—especially with slippery things like soup.

Enter the spoon.

One day, when someone was slurping their soup, an argument broke out. Someone else got angry and hit them with their spoon. Their neighbor hit them back.

Things escalated.

It was quickly discovered that spoons could be used for terrifyingly violent things that no one had ever intended—like gouging out eyeballs.

At some point, after witnessing all the horrific spoon carnage, someone said, “This must be stopped.” And someone else agreed. And thus was born the Association for Spoon Safety.

The Association for Spoon Safety made rules so that everyone would be safe using spoons.

They made rules for eating and rules for stirring. They made rules for acceptable spoon materials and rules for how to hold them. They made rules for shaping and rules for slurping (especially slurping) They also made rules for other spoon-shaped things used for digging or gardening, because it only stood to reason. And because they decided they could.

There were rules for all spoon-shaped things. And punishments.

Still, there was spoon-shaped violence. And people were unhappy.

The leaders of the Association for Spoon Safety were soon overthrown by some of their own members who considered the rules insufficient.

They renamed themselves the Association for Spoon Savers.

They ordered all spoon-shaped objects to be collected and guarded so that no one could use them to cause further harm. They deputized people to seize all the spoons and lock them away. They created a rigorous certification process for spoon usage, and only those people were permitted to use spoons.

This made a lot of people unhappy—especially when it became clear that some of the certified spoon users were hitting people and gouging out eyeballs themselves.

These unhappy people named themselves the Association of Spoon Saviors and declared that the spoons must be liberated. They stormed the spoon strongholds and, as they left, smashed anyone who got in their way with spoon-shaped specimens.

Chaos ensued.

Historians, having unearthed texts from the various factions in question, have had great difficulty providing clarity in the matter of spoon history. There is anecdotal evidence that there were always some who just wanted to be able to eat soup, but those views were not committed to writing, and, as such, are impossible to verify. As with all anthropological efforts, subjective interpretations abound. Arguments regarding translation are heated, and issues of objective truth versus cultural tradition are difficult to validate. Slurping remains a point of great contention.