There is a power plant inside my mouth

At our dining table, there is a spoon that only I use.

It is made of transparent plastic, the kind of flimsy, unreliable thing you get when you buy a bento at a convenience store. Mine was bought at a 100-yen shop, and it has almost no dignity as a piece of tableware.

When I eat homemade curry or pudding with this, for some reason, I get a strangely desolate feeling, as if I had become a school lunch taster.

It is not that I am an extreme plastic enthusiast. I am not setting sail into a sea of curry with such cheap equipment by choice.

Actually, as of a certain day, I started getting electric shocks from those 'normal metal spoons'.
It is not an exaggeration. I really do get electric shocks.

Human beings can sometimes suddenly exhibit incomprehensible rejection reactions. In my case, it was 'metal spoons'. Please do not misunderstand; it is not that I have trauma from failing to bend spoons while admiring Uri Geller.

I think it started with a single silver filling.
One evening at dinner. It was the moment I scooped up the curry rice my wife, Torako-san, had made with my usual silver spoon and put it in my mouth.

'Zing!'

A thin bolt of lightning dashed from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. That unpleasant sensation where my spine shivered and every pore on my body tightened.

'Yikes!'
I dropped the spoon and writhed in agony.

'W-what's wrong?'
Torako-san is looking at me with her eyes wide open.

'Th-the spoon... it gave me an electric shock.'

'Huh? The spoon?'

That hair-raising shudder you feel when you accidentally bite into the aluminum foil wrapping a rice ball as a child. That exploded in my mouth, ten times over.

Why did this happen?
When I looked it up on the internet later, I found out something surprising.

It is said that when different metals, like a silver filling and a spoon, touch with saliva as an electrolyte in between, a weak electricity called 'galvanic current' can be generated. Apparently, a super-miniature battery, or rather a 'small power plant', has been built inside my mouth.

Well, the power generation is minimal and doesn't contribute a single thing to our electricity bill, yet it performs the job of making me shudder with great enthusiasm. What an unnecessary feature.

I reported to Torako-san, 'Hey, my mouth might be able to light up a small light bulb right now,' but she just sighed and said, 'It won't light up, but you poor thing,' while showing a little bit of sympathy.

Since then, a quiet battle has been continuing at my dining table.

At first, I thought, 'I just shouldn't bite it, right?' It should be safe if I don't let it touch the silver filling directly. Thinking that, I tried eating carefully using only the right side of my mouth.

However, it seems that once a human being experiences intense discomfort, the brain takes the initiative to learn and anticipate it. Just by having a metal spoon approach my teeth, my body automatically triggers a defense instinct, sounding an emergency alarm that says, 'Here it comes!'

Even without contact, just the cold sensation of the spoon touching my lips causes me to feel an electric shock from afar. It seems the power plant has not only established itself in my mouth but has also opened a branch office inside my brain.

The damage continued to spread.
A scene on a food report show where a celebrity takes a big bite of a delicious-looking cake with a metal spoon. Just seeing that makes my spine tingle and I shudder with a 'yikes'.

Just as seeing a pickled plum makes one salivate, my brain automatically replays that electric current.

'Oh my, you're watching that again,'
Torako-san laughs and sympathizes with me, but a husband who gets shocked every time he watches a food report show is quite pathetic. My internal brain power plant is in full operation.

Thanks to this, whenever a metal spoon appears on TV, I've started watching its tip instead of the food.

Because of this, I've given up on metal and spend my days escaping to plastic or wooden spoons.

But this is also troublesome.
Even when eating top-tier curry, I can't shake the feeling that I'm eating in a convenience store parking lot late at night. No matter how delicious the curry is, the moment I scoop it with a transparent spoon from a dollar store, it gets labeled as a supermarket sample.

Moreover, even though a spoon shouldn't have a taste, the material of plastic adds a topping of 'blandness'.

So, I tried a wooden spoon next.
It has warmth and doesn't feel cheap. I thought, 'This might work!' But the 'thickness' inherent to wood gets in the way.

Certainly, the warmth of wood is wonderful. But the moment it enters my mouth, the presence of the spoon fills my mouth more than the food itself. Because of that thickness of a fraction of a millimeter, the curry sauce doesn't slide smoothly into my mouth.

Fried rice is the worst. Before I can enjoy the loose texture of the rice grains, I feel like I'm licking a wooden rice paddle. It's the same with ice cream and cake. There's the fundamental problem of not being able to scoop it well, but the moment it enters my mouth, the presence of the spoon—the feeling of 'Oh, I'm biting on wood right now'—overpowers the food.

I just want to face delicious food purely, but there's a piece of 'wood' sitting right in the middle. My oral sensors seem to be unnecessarily precise.

The texture and the perfectly calculated form of a metal spoon with its exquisite thinness and hardness as it slips out of the mouth. It was only after losing it that I realized the greatness of that silver thing.

Eating out has also become troublesome.
I could just eat dishes meant for spoons with chopsticks, but I worry too much, thinking, 'Isn't it rude to eat food that the chef intended to be eaten with a spoon using chopsticks?'

The chef probably doesn't care that much. I know that. Even so, I take on the burden of dining etiquette that no one asked me to follow.

That said, I can't easily bring myself to say, 'Could I have some chopsticks?' So, I choose things I can eat with chopsticks rather than what I actually want to eat. It looks like I'm looking at the menu, but in reality, I'm looking at a list of tableware.

Is there any way to escape this tasting session that only I am experiencing?

Wandering the sea of the internet night after night, I found posts from predecessors with similar worries.

'A titanium spoon worked for me!'

Titanium! What a wonderful-sounding word. A light, strong, magical metal said to be used in luxury watches and spaceships. It is highly compatible with the human body and is said to have very little of the metallic taste typical of other metals.

This is it!
The day has finally come for my oral power plant to be shut down.

The price is over a thousand yen per spoon. It is expensive for a spoon, but if it brings back a peaceful curry life, it is a small price to pay.

However, when I looked into it, there were people who said that even titanium didn't work for them. In the corner of the screen, a single star shines lonely.

I froze like an insulator, still gripping the mouse.
It seems even saviors have individual differences.

Titanium is a metal. Even if it is unlikely to generate electricity, there is a good chance that the moment my lips feel the luster and coldness characteristic of a spoon, my brain will jump the gun and think, 'Ah, it's metal! Discharge!'

That's right, the problem might lie in the power plant inside my brain.

If that is the case, what will be tested in this next purchase is not the performance of the titanium. It is a psychological battle of whether my brain will overlook an unfamiliar metal. The world is full of things you don't know until you try them.

In my head, various versions of me start an emergency meeting.
The titanium proponents shout, 'Let's believe in the romance of space!' The opposition is terrified, saying, 'It'll be no good anyway.' The realists lament, 'With over a thousand yen, we could buy so much delicious pudding.'
It's impossible to settle.

In the first place, what does titanium taste like? No, since it's a metal, it shouldn't have a taste, but I can't help but feel that the power plant in my brain has already started warming up, saying, 'Welcome, Mr. Titanium. I'm ready to generate electricity at any time.'

And so, I still haven't been able to bring myself to try titanium today.

Should I buy it? No, if I pay over a thousand yen and get electrocuted again, I feel like I would end up hating not just the spoon, but the very future of titanium.

Thinking about such things, on a summer night, I am scooping cubed watermelon from a bowl with a wooden spoon. After chasing it a few times, a piece finally lands on the thick spoon.

The power plant inside my mouth is still quietly and strictly on high alert today.

However, at the branch office that has relocated to my brain, the opening review for the yet-to-be-seen titanium spoon is still being carefully continued.

Aioi Essay

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