A fork in the road

I love puns, and will go out of my way to slip the most groan-inducing ones into everyday conversation. So when our realtor instructed us to turn at the fork in the road, I realized my life was about to become a whole lot punnier.

There it was, a giant piece of silver flatware towering over the intersection. I should have been looking at the house, examining it for flaws and mentally placing furniture, but instead I was conjuring up scenes of a swimming pool-sized bowl of pasta with an accompanying hay bale meatball, speared by four rigid prongs. Of all the things I had feared putting up with as neighbors-- garbage dumps, cemeteries, republicans -- I had never once considered the possibility of soaring silverware. As I examined each lengthy spike, I suddenly understood how ants must feel at a picnic. I imagined peering out at it from our bedroom window late at night, its long handle glowing in the moonlight as the Frankenfork emerged from the dark dungeon of the dishwasher to take over the town.

Luckily the house didn't mirror its neighbor's flare for the offbeat. It was literally everything we'd been searching so long and hard for. For the past month, we had driven on what seemed like every road in the county, our eyes glazing over until we spotted a red and white "for rent" sign. We had seen it all. Stinky Steve's overpriced house of mold was complete with a downed electrical wire and rusted out gas grill in the driveway. A dilapidated duplex bore cigarette stains on the carpet as a gun-toting redneck patrolled the shared driveway. We couldn't run from these places fast enough, and my fiance and I had nearly given up on the hope of ever moving past a long distance relationship and moving in together.

Nearly a month later, we were at our own fork in the road. Prospects of marriage and mortgages tugged at one side of the stale red stoplight. The lost days of college and fleeting commitments stood on the other. The house rested in between.

We eagerly took the house and ironically received flatware as a housewarming present. Now we're free to dream of the future under the glow of tourists' brake lights and camera flashes. We took the fork in the road, and that has made all the difference.