The Forks

My guest today once worked the night shift in a warehouse, mostly operating a forklift truck. Several of his friends joined him at that job, and they all lived the inverted life of night-time workers together.

Once night, the gang was sitting around contemplating what to do after playing all the video games they felt like playing. One person offered: "let's do something mischievous!" They undertook to toilet paper the house of the leader of their religious congregation. (My guest belongs to a faith with a lay clergy, where the congregation members have close, chummy relationships with their leaders. Please do not envision him toilet papering the home of some aged Irish priest.) A late-night trip to Walmart secured them the toiled paper and forks needed for their undertaking.

If you don't know, the forks bought by the mischievous gang were to be used in a process called "forking." Forking involves jamming hundreds of disposable plastic forks into the sod of someone's lawn. Forking does most of its emotional work through incongruity. The victim emerges from his or her home and sees two things which do not normally go together: landscaping and dinner ware. For a few bizarre moments, the victim tries to reorient him or herself in this new reality. It's like discovering a clown in your shower.

(In recent years, forking has become part and parcel with thorough toilet papering. Personally, I think forking looses a great deal of its punch when paired with toilet papering. Toilet papering is a crude prank in that it simply steals the victim's time; the pranksters are essentially forcing the homeowner to engage in a tedious cleanup operation. If, as I have posited, the primary value of forking is disorientation, toilet papering reduces that effect because it announces that teenage pranksters have been afoot. Rather than the lawnowner contemplating what incomprehensible set of forces could have driven forks into her lawn, the toilet paper immediately evokes the image of teenage pranksters silently driving plastic stakes. The clown in your shower isn't surprising if you know your cruel cousin hired it and hid it in your shower.)

The mischievous gang set about their secret work and toilet papered the home and forked the lawn. They retreated into the night. Later, they discovered that their congregation leader was away on business, so his pregnant wife had done most of the cleanup.