The Monkey Spoon: A Tale of Why Scott Is Such a Great Dad

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Luca who, like his parents, liked to have things just so. This particular summer, he went to day camp at a place called Touch of Nature. He hiked and canoed and made things like bird feeders & bug jars. Every day he took his lunch of pasta or pizza, Diego yogurt, mango fruit leather and carrots (and sometimes celery he dipped in olive oil . . . odd, I know). He ate his yogurt with a very special plastic spoon. It was brown and the handle was in the shape of a monkey. One day, Luca was in a hurry to move on to the activity after lunch. In his haste, he left his special spoon behind and no one could find it.

The next morning, Luca cried to his mother about losing his special monkey spoon. "I can't find it! I will never get it back!" he sobbed. "I don't want that green plastic snake spoon!" he yelled. "I want the monkey spoon." Well, Luca's mother does not do morning all that well. She told him through clenched teeth to forget it. It was just a plastic spoon. Couldn't he ask the counselors at camp to look for it again? Until then he would have to use the snake or the whale spoon. This was no good for Luca-who-liked-everything-to-be-the-same. He cried real tears as he brushed his teeth and got dressed. His mother who does not do morning well tried to convince him to get over it again and again. It is a plastic spoon for god's sake.

In walked his father who remains calm and empathetic and does morning much better than his mother. His mother looked at his father and said, "I'm having a hard time being sympathetic. It's a plastic spoon." Luca continued to cry and protest. His father knelt down on the floor in front of the unhappy boy and said, "I'm sorry you lost your spoon. It's okay to be sad. You loved your brown monkey spoon. You miss it." Luca stopped crying and nodded his head. His father explained that when he was a boy he had a favorite dump truck that he took to the pool with him. And, one day he left the dump truck at the pool. Luca asked, "Did you get it back?" And the father who remains calm and empathetic and does morning much better than the mother said, "No. No one found it. But, you know what? I had other toys. I missed the dump truck. I was sad, but I felt better after a while." By this time the boy wasn't crying any more.

And, by this time the grouchy mother had torn apart the cabinets and found another brown plastic monkey spoon and everyone lived happily ever after thanks to the great father (and grouchy yet determined mother).

The end.

Happy Father's Day to one awesome Dad!