Unfiltered Story #412322

A lot of people fixated on the forks and knives on this story I submitted. https://notalwaysright.com/its-a-miracle-some-peoples-children-survive-childhood/353200/

So… When I was a kid this is how we set the table: Plate, salad plate, bowl. Glass, saucer for cup, cup. Salad fork, dinner fork, soup spoon, tea spoon, butter knife, and steak knife. I don’t really remember the exact layout they *needed* to be put in, because I didn’t care then, and now I live my life with one type of fork, one type of spoon, and one type of knife. (I like, I have a couple of specialty spoons, forks, and knives that I use once in a blue moon, but they do NOT sit on the table with every meal)

Dad insisted we eat this way for every meal because it was <i>the way things were done</i>. Grandma used to beat him when he did it wrong.

So, once when we were visiting Grandma for the holidays, she asked me to set the table. I was still a kid, and her salad forks and dinner forks didn’t look different to me. <b>our</b> salad forks had three prongs and the dinner forks had four, which is how I had learned to tell them apart. To me they were indistinguishable.

So I didn’t do it wrong. Grandma started threatening to do something to me. I didn’t really understand her threats: I’d never been spanked and I didn’t understand her indirect references to a ‘cane’ nor a ‘belt’. Dad stood up, and asked me gently to leave the room. Then he started yelling at grandma.

Grandma never threatened me with a cane or a belt again. I didn’t learn what spanking, caning, or other physical punishments ever were until I was much older.