parent cleans child’s room, finds every spoon in known universe

child, 8, hotly insists “i don’t even USE spoons!”

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duncan mcphee just “wanted a friggin’ spoon.”

the 31-year-old father of three went into his daughter abigail’s room — “wearing snowboots because of the absurd mess on her floor” — and came out with nineteen spoons.

“and that was just the first tranche,” mcphee said. he added that he’s in contact with the guinness book of world records because the spoon total exceeds anything reported elsewhere, in addition to the novel designs, some of which spoon historians say match no known civilization or language.

abigail, for her part, stood with her fists on her hips and insisted she doesn’t “use spoons for a-ny-thing.”

she then sighed. “okay. so maybe i take the ocCASIONal bowl of cereal into my room. but. i always come back out with it!”

mcphee shook his head and pointed to the second tranche: 208 princess spoons, “many of them from yard sales after abigail kept insisting ‘daddy, we have no princess spoons!’ i told her she had plenty in her room from where she insists she take every meal because ‘i’m doing secret assa — ’”

at that, abigail clamped her father’s mouth shut.

looking outside the family, cultural scholars would not normally be brought in to consult on a case of a parent retrieving spoons from a child’s room, but noted culinary expert dr. g. r. w. “bethie” bethson said “some of these objects, and i’m speaking generally, have no clear connection to any earth-based civilization.”

abigail allowed as to how “some of them might have come from exoplanets or something after i maybe installed a teeny-tiny wormhole as part of a … routine class project. yeah, that’s it.”

mcphee snorted. “honey, i remember you ‘secretly’ ordering that assa — ”

whereupon abigail again clamped her father’s mouth shut.

once he regained the ability to speak without having to evade a jelly-scented index finger, he noted that he will next be cataloging “all the friggin’ bowls in that mess of a room. that’s got to be a record too.”

abigail scoffed. “the real record will be the body count for my s — my school project.”