Yogurt Spoon 1/31

    Man, I love yogurts. Any flavor, color size. I'll even eat the plain, bitter, fermented greek yogurts which are honestly kind of nasty. Ok so maybe not every yogurt, but you get the point. Dairy in general is fantastic. It wasn’t always this way though. The most memorable thing I ever got in the mail was my yogurt spoon, but beyond the physical item, the ideas and connections it presented to me have stuck with me since. 

    The first yogurt I ever had was my mom’s kefir. At 6 years old, I picked up the bottle thinking it was just milk. Boy was I wrong. Instantly I spit it out, disgusted at the drink that she regularly consumed. In my mind it was poison, not fit for human consumption. When confronted, she disagreed. 

“You’ll get used to the taste, it’s fine”

Lie

I never liked Kefir, and I never will. 

    The next yogurt I tried was called Trix. This was my first excursion back into the world of  fermented milk ever since the Kefir incident. Now Trix was more up my alley. It was bright, colorful, full of sugar, and had mixes of flavors. Cotton Candy, Strawberry Banana, Triple Cherry. There was this one flavor that was red and green and when you mixed it, it turned gray. It was just perfect. But as if that all weren’t good enough, on the back of the package was a much more enticing offer. If I bought 8 boxes and mailed them as proof back to Trix, they’d send me a plastic spoon bedazzled with LEDs in the mail. I had to have it.

    Trading boxes with friends, pleading with my mom to buy more, I had my head in the game. By the end of the week, I had accumulated the necessary boxes while also giving myself a headstart on a diabetes diagnosis. In fact, I think my yogurt consumption has never reached the same levels as the amount I ate that week. Together with my mom, we sealed up a letter with all 8 flattened boxes inside, and shipped it off, never to be seen again. 

    Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. My spoon was nowhere to be seen. Yet when I least expected it, my mom turned up holding my new most beloved possession: the spoon. A vibrant red, with a picture of the Trix rabbit on the base and a button halfway up to turn on the lights, it was an instant hit. I soon got back to my yogurt eating ways, but it wasn’t reserved for just Trix. New yogurts especially, but also soups, rice, even trying to scoop up water using it, I kept looking for new innovations in spoon technology. If there was a place to use the spoon, you knew I’d bring my Trix spoon with me.

    And yet looking back I wonder why I cared so much about this spoon. My adoration continued for years, far longer than I’d care to admit. Why was it that this specific item meant so much to me? Originally I got it on a whim, enticed by the appeal of the flashing lights, but as I grew older I stuck with it. It was by far not my ‘coolest’ or most expensive gift. So why?

    I believe that the reason I stuck with that spoon was because of the effort and new hobby it introduced me to. It showed me the physical value that my own hard work can bring. It also showed me to branch out. Even though it’s been years since I’ve eaten a Trix yogurt, yogurts in general are still something I eat regularly, something which I can accredit to this one spoon, the spoon that changed the way I eat. Tonight when I get home I promise to bring back my Trix spoon, eating a yogurt under its pulsating lights.