Spoon Warfare

Funny moment, Week 8



Rambo 5: Spoon Blood

Night one with the team from Huntsville, Alabama. I always like to get to know the teams when they show up, so I usually accept the offer to spend time with them, whatever it may be. That night, it was Spoons.

Now Spoons is one of those games that I was introduced to in college, and I think I may have played it once, during my last two weeks in Charlottesville ever. It took over 150 weeks in Charlottesville for me to even consider playing the game. That’s how fond I was of Spoons.

However, on that night, my whole view changed. Now I love Spoons. If not solely for the memory of Team Huntsville (Cove Church edition).

This was a team of 22 adults from Alabama, and they were a boisterous bunch. I wasn’t aware of it until 7 of us sat around a blue, plastic picnic table in the common area of our Methodist Seminary dorm house on that first night. There we were, circled around the blue, plastic picnic table in our blue, plastic picnic chairs, with huge, hunking metal spoons the size of serving spoons at your grandmother’s Thanksgiving Day feast (note to all you sneaky Spoon grabbers out there: you’d have met in your match in this game . . . this was no time for a sneakfest).

The leader of the Spoon bunch was a journalist, a former sportswriter with a penchant for the exhilarating (we’ll call him Rambo for the remainder of this blog, just to somewhat protect the identity of the innocent). He had picked up the Turkey-Day-sized clunkers at the dollar store before he came to Costa Rica—I was surprised they let him through security with such weapons at his disposal.

With every overly-intense passing of the cards (per Spoon etiquette), the seismic rating on the wobbly picnic table registered in the high 5’s, and everyone in the common room could hear the incessant rattling of the metal mini-ladles. That would usually persist for anywhere from 30-120 seconds. Then came time for The Grab.

Everyone who’s ever played Spoons knows all about The Grab. As I already mentioned, all you sneaky grabbers out there would have met your match in this game. So forget about all those silly shenanigans, The Grab on night one of Team Huntsville was more like bloodsport. Adults, anywhere from 35-60, were reaching across the table like ravenous pitbulls fighting for the last piece of my momma’s chicken and dumplings (the most scrumptious meal on this side of the ozone layer). Spoons went flying, fingernails drew blood, and maddening laughter ensued. It was quite the sight.

But none of that is what made this memory make it to the Funny Moments page. No, no, those details are just accomplices to the big daddy of them all: The Fall of Rambo.

As I already mentioned, Rambo was the leader of the Spoon bunch. He brought the spoons, he explained the rules, and he encouraged the madness that was Team Huntsville’s first night in Costa Rica. He was excitedly recruiting people left and right to join our Spoons game, even though the vast majority of them had never heard of such a pastime. And then, right around game 3 or 4, his excitement was brought to an abrupt halt. In game 3 or 4, The Grab became more than just a metaphor of ravenous pitbulls fighting over their last meal, it became a real-life WWE battlefield, hardcore edition [editor’s note: while some may not consider WWE professional wrestling to fall into the “real-life” category, Jesus said we were all to have the faith of children . . . just work with me on this one].

Everything was going along just dandily in that game: people passing their cards, everyone waiting with anticipation to elbow their neighbors out of Spoon contention—you know, the usual. Then someone got four of a kind, and The Grab was initiated. My memory of the ensuing play-by-play goes something like this: BOOM, BAM, CRACK, SPLAT . . . OW! Followed by momentary worry, and then inexhaustible laughter.

On this particular grab, Rambo’s neighbor got a little too vicious with his forearm, and Rambo may have been a little too audacious with his body lunge. The neighbor sent Rambo a back-armed forearm shiver that would have sent Hulk Hogan out of the soft landing-zone within the ropes and onto the cold, hard pavement surrounding the ring. Because that’s exactly what happened to Rambo.

The floor of the seminary is unforgiving black tile, complete with an easy-to-clean glossy surface. And after the BOOM of the neighbor’s forearm shiver, and the BAM of Rambo falling back into his seat, came the CRACK of the blue, plastic picnic chair, the SPLAT of Rambo’s body nailing the unkind tile, and the OW! of Rambo’s inherent reaction to the agonizing fall. So there laid the great Rambo, clutching his arm, wallowing in pain, and rolling through the remains of the broken plastic chair that lay in his midst.

Now that’s some real-life WWE action if I’ve ever heard of it.

Thank you Spoons, and thank you Team Huntsville, for laughing uncontrollably and never letting our brave Spoon leader forget the fall of pride and body that happened in night one—The Fall of Rambo.