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FLRC Newsletter - May 2005 |
| Of Wooden Spoons and Englishwomen | |
While on a stroll across Ho Plaza on a beautiful April Fool's Day (guess even Mother Nature likes to play tricks on that day), I noticed a young athletic couple, male and female, dressed in almost identical black outfits—T-shirts and running tights—coming toward me. As they drew closer, I noticed the gold emblem emblazoned on the front of the T-shirt, something about "Achilles" and "Oxford/Cambridge." From postings on the FLRC list earlier in the week, I knew that Cornell was hosting the Oxford Cambridge 10K, so I assumed I was looking at two of the British athletes.
I also happened to notice that one of them, the young lady, had a kitchen spoon dangling from a pink ribbon that was looped about her neck. It looked odd, but I figured it must have been some tradition—maybe her first time in America or something—that I would never hear about.
The next morning, after enduring a long slog through the rain that represented the rest of Mother Nature's April Fool's joke, I stopped in at Barton to see if the stuffin' Skunks (as the people preparing race packets for the Skunk Cabbage seemed to be called) needed another hand. It only took Diane Sherrer and Tim Ingall one look at me sloshing across Barton Hall to decide that they already had more than enough help, even though there were only four people present! Cold and tired as I was, I didn't really argue, and was about to turn and head for home when I realized that the other two members of the group were young ladies wearing the same black T-shirts with "Achilles" and "Oxford/Cambridge" emblazoned on the front as I had seen on Friday. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked about the young lady with the wooden spoon. Their first reaction was to laugh, and then to ask if I wasn't sure I hadn't seen a wooden spoon on the young man as well. Confused, I answered in the negative, at which point they told all of us about the tradition of the spoon. There were two such spoons—one for men, one for women—and they were given out to the person who had done the stupidest thing the day before in the judgement of the rest of the team. Tim, who must have been thrilled to have been conversing in his native tongue for a change, asked "Is it something they'd regret, as well?," to which the answer was "usually." Apparently, there was an old Cambridge tradition in which the lowest ranking scholar in a graduating class received a spoon instead of a trophy—though neither young lady knew why.
So, one of life's little mysteries revealed—although, after running through Saturday's rain, I think I qualified for my own wooden spoon!
(Hmmm, this could be a fun tradition in our club....)
By the way, I learned more about the Oxford/Cambridge series from the Cornell Athletic site: Men's and Women's.
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