The Price of Silver

I’ve decided to have nice things.  And by “have nice things” I do mean “haunt the thrift store down the street, rummage through the castoff, once-nice things of others, and then buy them for a quarter.”

It is in this pursuit that I recently purchased seven spoons, four knives, and a book. 

In truth, the book was really less a symbol of sophistication and more just a reflection on the fact that, as a rule, I like books.  And this one had a nice green cover.  As I believe deeply in judging books by their covers, and am fond of green, the fifty cents seemed well worth the impulsive purchase. 

The cutlery, on the other hand, has been a long time coming.

Several years ago, before I put my meager possessions in storage, packed a suitcase, and left the country of my birth for foreign shores, my silverware was already in bad shape.  I was in grad school.  I was poor.  And sometimes I ate with my fingers to avoid the possibility of accidentally consuming rust.  And sometimes I just consumed the rust. 

But I’ve traveled the world now.  I’ve watched the sun rise over ancient ruins, hiked glaciers, argued in foreign languages, and made a general nuisance of myself in any hemisphere you can name.  Clearly, I’ve become worldly and urbane, if not measurably richer, and the thought of eating my frozen waffles with a side of tetanus just doesn’t have the appeal it once did.  So when I returned to the States some time ago and began sifting through my storage unit to see what I’d forgotten I owned, I decided it was time to jettison some flotsam. 

First thing in the dumpster: well, if I’m honest, it was a broken lamp.  Second thing in the dumpster: actually, I think it was a crappy chair.  But definitely somewhere in the first five to seven things in the dumpster: the silverware (which is I think a rather generous term for those particular implements). 

Some partings are difficult, heavy with memory and sentiment.  This one wasn’t.

But the fact remained that now I could still just eat with my fingers, not because I had only rusty spoons, but because I had no spoons at all.  Obviously a step up, but still.  Fingers.

A decision had to be made and this was it: if I was going to have silverware, it was going to be silver ware.  Remember, I’m urbane now and it was time for me to prove it, spoon by spoon. 

A problem arose, however.  Mysteriously, my newfound refinement did not seem to bring with it any level of unearned affluence.  This made me sad.  In a cosmopolitan way, naturally, but sad is still sad and I didn’t enjoy it.  

But a solution was not far behind and an epiphany came to me.  Instead of being Gucci-fancy, I would be Anthropologie-fancy.  Instead of being sleek and elegant (which, let’s be honest, were going to be a stretch anyway), I would be charmingly eclectic and delight others with my laid-back gentility.

So I went to thrift stores and started rifling through tubs of spoons, forks, and knives, searching for the lonely silver islands in an ocean of stainless steel and plastic handles with purpose and resolve.  Bent handles and crooked tines went flying.  Only the best!  My standards were high and I would not be diverted, as evidenced by the facts that I had to body block more than one old woman who started to encroach upon my silverware bucket and that I only bought one book.  To date I have accumulated seven spoons and four knives and they are hard-won.  My spoons may not match my knives or, indeed, each other, but they are silver and I will declare until the day I die (or am rich enough to have a matching set of something and can pretend that it was always so) that this was the plan from the start. 

Despite this clear victory, however, a second problem arose.  My lovely eclectic silverware, while elementally silver, was visually black.  The solution to this was an old one and I took my cues from Carson on Downton Abbey, as I do in most things.  I assumed it would be like this.

I mean I didn’t have an awesome green apron, but I knew it would be but a matter of moments before I was looking at my own reflection in the back of a spoon and enjoying the highly polished fruits of my minimal labors.

But by the time I’d finished two spoons, the remaining five spoons and four knives had somehow become this:

And I was at a loss as to how to explain it.  Before you could say “tarnish is the modern-day result of original sin,” I went from Happy-in-a-Job-Well-Done-Carson to a Someone’s-Going-to-Pay-for-This-Carson.

And then to a different sort of Carson altogether.

But I quickly moved on and finally settled on a still pretty unhappy, but more appropriate Carson.

No matter how you look at it, it wasn’t pretty.  Eventually the spoons and knives were, but I could smell silver polish for two days after and my fingerprints were all either rubbed off or filled in completely with tarnish.  (Which reminds me – I should go on that crime spree I’ve been planning soon – before my fingerprints grow back.  I won’t even have to wear gloves.  Of course, my fingers don’t bend quite as well as they used to.  Maybe I should wait and wear the gloves after all.)

Though I’m glad to say I’ve returned to being a Carson governed once again by civility and equanimity, I confess I am beginning to wonder whether I really need any forks.