Yellow Revelation.


If it wasn’t for The Simpsons, I wouldn’t know what one of my kitchen utensils did.

For years, I'd washed up the offending item whenever it appeared amongst the dirty dishes, oblivious to its purpose. ‘What the hell is this for?’, I’d think to myself. I’d never seen my wife use it and I’d never used it myself. If I had, I wouldn’t know if I was doing. For all I knew, I could be holding it the wrong way up.

It wasn’t until Marge Simpson name-checked the implement in the episode ‘A Milhouse Divided’ that I came out of the dark. In it, she plans a dinner party, in an attempt to reunite recently separated Van Houtens. While shopping for it, she panics about not being suitably prepared, saying, “It's just not a dinner party without a melon baller - and we'll need a citrus zester, a ravioli crimper, ooh, and an oyster mallet”.

As she spoke, she held a perfectly drawn replica of my mystery apparatus in her right hand. Suddenly, it all became clear:


I owned a citrus zester without even knowing it. Think of all the lemons I would have rinded if I had. This wasn’t the first time that Matt Groening taught me a lesson: if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t know why you shouldn’t step on a rake.

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