DURHAM, NC – This past November, neurologist Adrianna Phelps was forced to improvise and use a tuning fork to eat her Caesar salad. Ever since that fateful day, Phelps can’t help but wonder where she placed both her tuning spoon and tuning knife.
“Drats, now where’d I put my tuning spoon and tuning knife?” Phelps muttered, searching through her white coat pockets and black bag full of neurology gadgets and gizmos. “Gosh darn it, I’m so absentminded. Where could they be? I’m pretty sure I purchased them as a set at Crate & Barrel. There where I always buy my physical exam instruments.”
Other health care professionals may not be in on the secret, but neurologists have been bothered with a question that has approached the status of an age-old riddle: We’ve got all these tuning forks, but where are all the tuning spoons and turning knives at?
“Not many people realize our society’s tagline is ‘Where are the damn tuning spoons and knives, man?!'” explained American Academy of Neurology (AAN) president Ralph L. Sacco, who owns a dozen tuning forks, a pair of tuning chopsticks, but no other tuning utensils to his name. “I do have a theory though. Wherever all those missing pens are in the medical universe, I believe in my heart of hearts that that’s where they’ll be.”
Phelps thinks that if she had a full meal setting the outcome of her meal back in November might have been different.
“I might have shortchanged myself by eating my meal with only one utensil,” Phelps admitted, now looking for her tuning salt & tuning pepper. “Now if I had the complete dining set up, maybe even a tuning napkin, I might have had an easier time.”
She added moments later: “Hey, sorry to bother you, but can you pass the tuning ketchup?”
