Kitchen Scissors
Since I was a little girl my mother has instilled in me the belief that kitchen scissors are one of god’s many gifts to the earth. They are the kitchen’s most essential tool. Need to cut Eggo waffles fast so you can feed your three children? Kitchen scissors. Need to cut a rack of ribs fresh off the grill? Kitchen scissors. They are so essential in fact that we always had multiple pairs: a blue pair, matching the theme of my mother’s kitchen, and a black pair with silver details that came with a fancy knife set. They are invaluable to the preparation of almost every meal, and because of their value it was a spoken rule of the house that they were never to leave the kitchen. This rule was of course not always abided by, and it was common to reach for them only to find that they weren’t in their proper resting place. This moment of disappointment was always followed by a desperate plea of ‘Where are the kitchen scissors?’ and then followed, hopefully, by the return of the scissors to their appropriate home: the kitchen.
Whilst studying abroad my junior year of high school, I discovered that human dependence on kitchen scissors was also present in Italy. Within the first week of arriving at my host family’s house in Vicenza, among other crucial vocabulary words, I learned the Italian word for scissors (forbici). My Italian grandmother even commented one afternoon on the universality of scissors when the mystery of the missing kitchen scissors stuck once again. She yelled, ‘Dove sono le forbici?’, before turning to me and asking if this was a problem that households had in the United States as well. Last year while staying with my boyfriend’s family in Bordeaux, the third French phrase I learned was ‘Où sont les ciseaux?’. Scissors are life.
A few weeks ago Binu, a friend in the program, suggested I try a street vendor who sells bún thịt nướng outside our dorm early in the morning. Eager to switch up my breakfast routine I wandered out of Bach Khoa early around 7:30am. I waited in line for a few minutes and when it came time for the vendor to make mine, she pulled out an old pair of kitchen scissors and went to work cutting lettuce and slicing spring rolls. Suddenly in a world full of unfamiliar utensils and food preparation methods, I felt at home standing on the street watching her skillfully use scissors to fill a to-go container with lettuce, herbs, and bean sprouts; then piling it high with rice noodles, fried spring rolls, grilled pork and finally garnishing it with pickled carrots, radish, and peanuts. This woman got it, she understood the importance of scissors and, just like that, I was hers and her delicious bún thịt nướng was mine.
It is safe to say that kitchen scissors are a global phenomenon and each time I watch bún thịt nướng lady prepare food I am reminded of my own mother and her yellow and blue kitchen that greeted me each morning. To me, kitchen scissors are a consistent and peculiar reminder that people everywhere – regardless of a million different factors like language, nationality, and religion – are really all just the same.
