The Spaghetti Mask

    You know, we have all been blessed with different talents. Some folks are really good at mechanics, some folks are excellent seamstresses, or they have a flair for writing or building things or they're mathematicians, or whatever. The fact is, I'm not very good at any of the above. I'm here to confess that I'm not even good at the simple art of eating spaghetti. We happened to have some earlier in the week. Nothing fancy, but it sure hit the spot. Fortunately I wasn't sitting in front of a mirror while I consumed my meal, or supper might have been brought to a sudden standstill. I could tell as I was enjoying this fine cuisine that I was slopping it all over my face. It didn't matter that I tried to wind it around the fork or eat slowly, or only put a few strands of spaghetti on the fork at one time, kind of like stringing those silver icicles on a Christmas tree, I could feel the sauce splashing on the side of my face and clogging my mustache with every forkful that I took. My fears were confirmed when I ran a napkin across my mug and it came back wet with sauce. It didn't help any that when I looked at Jan there wasn't a sliver of evidence that a drop of sauce had been any where near her. It was somewhat embarrassing to acknowledge that at the ripe old age of 65, I still hadn't mastered the art of eating spaghetti. It was while I was in the process of borrowing Jan's napkin, since mine had been rendered utterly useless, that I got the brilliant idea of inventing the Botts Spaghetti Mask. Perhaps I could jiggle the name a little and call it the Bottelli Spaghetti Mask, kind of make it sound Italian. Anyway, I was thinking that the mask would be a simple affair, made out of the same material as a good quality paper towel. It would have pre-cut holes for the eyes and a reinforced cut out for the mouth with a cheap rubber band strap like the kind that hold on a Halloween mask. When its time to sit down to a nice Italian dinner, don your disposable mask and have at it. No more fear of showing up at a PTA meeting with orange stripes or smudges splashed across your face because you rushed out of the house before you did a quick check in the mirror. I suppose the spaghetti mask would work for sloppy joes, some Chinese foods and for those folks who had been to the dentist and were still feeling the effects of Novocaine, but were too hungry to wait for it to wear off. They would come packaged like a box of Kleenex, with fifty or so to a box. Of course they couldn't be one size fits all. There would probably have to be a Kids size, a normal Adult size, and for those folks who really enjoy their food, the Rotund size. I think I may have stumbled on to something here. We were having dinner tonight at our friends, the Budkes, and I mentioned my idea. He was astonished that I wasn't rich already with ideas like the Spaghetti Mask. It just so happened that we were eating tacos, which for me, and I'm sure others around the world, are also a rather challenging food. Inevitably, whether utilizing the soft flour tortilla or the hard corn shell, the contents spill out of the taco and on to your clothes, or if you're lucky, the plate. It was while I was wrestling with my soft taco that I had the brilliant idea of the edible taco pin. It would be like a clothespin for tacos. You fill your shell full of your favorite delights, fold the taco together, clamp on the pin and eat to your heart's content. No more embarrassing spills all over your hosts linen tablecloth.I need to give it a little more thought though. I haven't come up with an edible material that would be springy enough to hold the taco together yet, but I will. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.