The difficult spoon

The spoon is silver, slightly bent, and no larger than the others in the drawer. Under a lamp it casts the shadow of a sentence. The sentence changes whenever somebody begins to copy it, usually after enough words have been written to make abandoning the task irritating.

Its first owner believed that the shadow expressed things she had been unable to say. This was a reasonable theory until it mentioned a disagreement between two people she had never met about a borrowed ladder. She sent it back to the shop, where it was mistaken for a complaint about the ladder.

The museum’s linguist has tried three lamps, two alphabets, and a colleague with whom he is no longer on speaking terms. He says the research is promising. The colleague says the spoon is perfectly legible when the linguist is out of the room.

We now exhibit it in diffuse daylight. It remains useful for stirring tea, although the custodian says it gives the impression of having objections. There is no evidence that the tea is aware of them.

Catalogue note: an invented object with invented owners. The transcription formerly printed here has been withdrawn at the spoon’s apparent request.