Classification

"I am a fork!" Child 1 announced this weekend.

I'd like to tell you there was a long and logical lead up (oooh! alliteration!) to this moment but no, actually it was a short and entirely ridiculous lead up. Which comes as no surprise to anyone who knows us.

And it wasn't enough to declare Its association with common cutlery, no. Child 1 immediately began agitating for fork rights and making random declarations of fork unity.

Child 2 naturally refused to be a fork. Since this is the Don't Touch Me Child we responded by declaring it a spoon - simply waiting to be cuddled. There was a certain amount of outrage, and possibly a little rebellious shouting of, "I'm a knife! a KNIFE!!" but Child 1 and I were not to be denied.

This left however the difficult problem of Child 3. Child 1 wasn't entirely sure Child 3 was worthy of forkishness and Child 2 was selfishly hogging both spoons AND knives with its stubborn refusal to accept its essential lovability. I resolved it though and declared Child 3 an egg slicer.* Child 3 was delighted.

Then we all did the fork dance of victory and finished our pasta.

*Anyone who has read Terry Pratchett will understand this, but for those who haven't, the egg slicer is the thing that everyone has but no one remembers buying. Also it's the thing that always gets caught in the drawer and causes the incarnation of the goddess Annoia. Since Child 3 is ubiquitous, has ridiculously long limbs that certainly give the impression they are about to get caught in things, and is probably the most committed acolyte in the spread of the cult of Annoia we felt it was a reasonable designation.