Life Imitates Art: Yogurt Edition

Before tap class tonight at the Hartt School 's Mort & Irma Handel Performing Arts Center, I bought a Greek yogurt at the cafe.

I picked up a plastic spoon and started eating.

Quickly I realized the spoon, in shape and size, was completely wrong for the food I was eating, and so, immediately and naturally, Joel Barlow's words from Canto Three of "The Hasty Pudding" (1793) came to mind:

There is a choice in spoons. Though small appear
The nice distinction, yet to me 'tis clear.
The deep-bowled Gallic spoon, contrived to scoop
In ample draughts the thin diluted soup,
Performs not well in those substantial things,
Whose mass adhesive to the metal clings;
Where the strong labial muscles must embrace,
The gentle curve, and sweep the hollow space.
With ease to enter and discharge the freight,
A bowl less concave and more dilate,
Becomes the pudding best...

The mock epic, perhaps the best neo-classical poem written in British America and definitely the best poem composed about cornmeal mush, now rings truer than ever for me...

...and I also now know to bring my own spoon to tap class (maybe one of those "Frosty" spoons from Wendy's)!