Ofcourse, being six, it didn't occur to me to ask someone - instead I spent many hours cogitating the strange phenomenon, and coming up with several inventive and deeply plausible explanations:
God knew I had been eating green peaches off the tree, and this was a sign from Him that I had better stop, or my insides will be twisted and bent;
OR, someone (probably a witch or something) used our spoons at night, to dig graves for nosy children under our house...
My most overwhelming suspicion, however, was that it had something to do with... my brothers.
For a time, I thought that perhaps only I could see the bendy spoons - since my mum and brothers would sit around the table, spooning their porridge into their mouths, handles askew, as if nothing was amiss.
As far as I was concerned, our household was full of mysterious phenomena: my brothers told me that the garage was off limits, because they were experimenting with radio-active materials that would melt my teeth out of my mouth if I came near it.
The thought of my teeth slowly dripping down my chin in a sticky white, snotty fashion, was enough to keep my mind from even contemplating why THEIR teeth were safe.
It was only after a couple of years, that my curiousity and growing distrust of my brothers gave me enough courage to enter the 'forbidden domain':
After careful planning I decided on a strategy involving several short recce missions into the hallowed ground, in particular on Saturdays, when my brothers would disappear in the early morning and not return for hours.
I also took out some insurance via my nightly prayers, reasoning with God that IF my suspicions were right, and my brothers were conducting Satan's business behind the roll-up doors, I could report on it and thereby ensure a more righteous world for all.
***
I crawled under a gap in the roll-up door for the first time - and my life has never been the same: nothing I could imagine, could prepare me for what lay between those four walls:
Motorcycles in various stages of decay/rebirth loomed in the darkness - handlebars like huge antelope horns, menacingly gleaming in the dim light.
Every breath of space was heaving with amazing and magical things: grotesque complicated tools and shiny spanners and tubes of vile liquid and ice cream tubs full of hundreds and thousands of bolts and nuts and screws and washers...and my mum's missing cooking pot full of thick, black oil.
And bent spoons.
The air was thick with an intoxicating mix of grease and rubber and petrol and breathing deeply, suddenly it came to me:
My brothers are Gods. This is their palace, and all these godly things are theirs and they know how to use all the magnicifent magic potions and where every one of those hundreds of bolts go...and they were the Benders of Spoons, because they could fix motorcycles and resurrect them from the dead and ride them.
From that moment, I was ready to do whatever rites of passage it took, to raise up the ranks until I was legally allowed in their 'inner sanctum'.
That was how I imagined it.
Reality turned out to be slightly less heroic:
"If you don't LET ME, I AM GOING TO TELL MUM ABOUT THE SPOONS AND HER BRAND NEW TEFLON SAUCEPAN that you've S T O L E N !!"
***
Worked a treat! ;)
