A Wooden Spoon For You!!

Sometimes small anecdotes startle and shake a person beyond one’s imagination and leave such an everlasting impression and a lesson that even if one tries to forget, one simply cannot.

The anecdote that I read goes something like this. Once there lived an old man with his son, wife and grandson. The old man was too old and would often drop a spoon or a glass or even could not hold peas in the spoon and spill them over the table and the floor. His son’s wife became disgusted one day and arranged a table and a chair in thee corner for the old man so that her husband and son could eat in peace. He was given food in a wooden bowl and a wooden spoon to eat so to avoid wrangling sounds and to avoid breakage of cutlery and crockery. The old man continued to eat with the same disarray, but now with tears of hurt in his eyes as well.

One day the father found his little son trying to make something with the wood. He asked him, “Son, what are you doing?” The son innocently replied, “Daddy, I am making a wooden spoon for you and Mama so that you could eat with it when you grow old.”

Startled? I know you would be. I don’t have to tell you that from that day onwards, the old man was brought back to the table to eat the way he did before.

I am sharing this with my readers, specially those who have their old parents living with them or dependent on them. Take good care of the old, as you would grow old too one day and beware of the fact that your children are watching you. Don’t let them make a wooden spoon for you and your spouse.