MandMcounter

and ended up selling spoons door-to-door

Those must have been really exceptional spoons!

This is going to sound ridiculous, but it's entirely true: I have, at all times, a spoon in my purse. It's a nice wooden one roughly the size of a teaspoon. I've lived in Korea for over 10 years, and soon after I first arrived, I got one of these little babies as a souvenir at a Buddhist temple. Soon after, I had occasion to use it with convenience store yogurt. I decided to keep it with me for eating utensil emergencies (which happen far more often than you'd think). The spoon weighs almost nothing, doesn't set off metal detectors, and can be replaced for roughly a dollar. I used to give them out as "happy trails" presents when people were leaving here after their language school contracts were finished.

Ah, spoons....

Oh, and you could probably use it for kindling if you were in a plane crash and you needed to cook the meat of a fellow victim.

My mom taught refugees from Cambodia and Laos in the early 80s. She said the Cambodians had some of the most horrifying stories (e.g. people being executed because they wore glasses). I'm glad your family made it over here.

I'm a 6'1" female and I'm not chill, so it's not that... :)

Actually, I feel kind of bad making light of the situation. They were probably really nice ornamental serving spoons or something and were sold back in the '50s maybe, when people in rural areas bought housewares from door-to-door salespeople. Still, it's kind of fun to imagine the scenarios in which a spoon sale might happen.