by Robrt L. Pela
Last week, a reader wrote pleading with me to tell her about my favorite spatula, but I cannot. I’m afraid that if I do, my other spatulas will feel bad. If I single out one spatula, the others might stop working properly. I can imagine those flimsy ones from the dollar store getting their feelings hurt and refusing to flip a hamburger patty, or my oldest one—the one with the duct-taped handle—deliberately breaking the yolk on an over-easy egg.
Instead, I’ll tell you about Great Big Giant Head, which is what we call the thing we keep our spatulas in. It’s a, um, great big giant head, made of ceramic and given to Mr. Grossman and me by our niece-in-law, Allison, a couple of Christmases ago. Mr. G. wanted to put a plant in it, but I know a spatula holder when I see one.
I saw another Great Big Giant Head once in an antique store, exactly the same as ours, which pissed me off because Allison got our Great Big Giant Head off the clearance table at Macy’s in 2005. The one in the antique store was priced at $175, which is more than ten times what Allison paid for mine. I couldn’t resist, so I asked the antique store owner about the one he had for sale. “Oh, yes, those were very popular in Italy shortly after the turn of the last century,” he told me, and I’m sorry I didn’t reply, “You’re full of shit, pal,” because his store closed shortly after that and now I’ll never have the chance to tell him that.
