THE SALAD SPOON

He was about to sit down to dinner when his girlfriend tried to serve him salad with the same spoon she had been licking all through prep.

The poster, a 25-year-old man, said he was grilling chicken while his 23-year-old girlfriend made a salad in the kitchen. At first, it looked like an ordinary weeknight meal. Then came the part that stopped him cold: while she was preparing the salad, she kept eating out of the bowl with a spoon, putting the same spoon back into the bowl, and mixing it around again.

This was not the first time they had fought about it. He said it was a recurring issue between them, something they had already discussed before. He found it gross and bad manners to eat from a serving dish and then return a used utensil to food other people would eat. So he asked her again to stop, or at least make herself a separate bowl if she wanted to snack while cooking.

She did not take that well. He said she got upset and dismissed his concern, and he let it go for the moment, going back to the grill.

By the time dinner was ready, the salad was on the table. Then came the next move: she tried to serve him a portion using the same spoon she had been eating from. He politely refused.

At first, he tried to sidestep the moment. When she asked why he wasn't eating, he gave harmless answers, telling her things like, "I'm just not in the mood for salad." He said that a few times, hoping to avoid a fight.

But she kept pressing him.

Eventually, he said what he was actually thinking: her reusing her dirty spoon in the bowl had turned him off from eating it.

That answer set her off. She told him she had spent so much time preparing it for him and that he was being dramatic. Then she hit him with another line that left him unsettled: "If you don't like that, you would've hated to watch me make the rice."

He said he had already eaten the rice, and the comment stuck with him. The post did not say how the argument ended, or whether he ever ate the salad.