WHAT has happened to the humble wishbone? The one that looks like the cleft of a slingshot. Is it like the Y in let bygones be bygones? Like speckled white fireflies that no longer sparkle in the night ...
Who remembers when brown-roasted chickens were big, fat and juicy? By the end of the meal, everyone around the table, especially the young crowd, was longing for that lucky bone.
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Two would hold the bone. They study it intensely before deciding which side of the miracle bone will make their desires and dreams come true. The first wish has already come true – help me, let it be my turn with the good luck charm.
You close your eyes tightly, count to three and then pull on it with your little finger. The one who breaks off the biggest piece gets to make a wish. The yearning must remain a great secret, otherwise it is simply a fata morgana, occasionally a lesson for one's life ahead.
Be careful what you wish for
Yes, dreams are sometimes crushed and be careful what you wish for. It might just come true – it is indeed the sharp edge of the existential double-edged sword in all its unpredictability.
Author Tove Danovich says: “The lucky bone is a metaphysical link to what we eat – a way of subconsciously knowing that birds have skeletons like ours, albeit lighter, thinner and so fragile that a small child holding one in its hands can break it."
The website wendag.com writes: “The Etruscans long before 400 B.C. believed chickens were fortune tellers and diviners. The hen because her cackle foretold the egg, the rooster because his crowing preceded the rising of the sun."
They cleaned a chicken's collarbone, placed it in the sun to dry, then picked it up and stroked it while making a wish – hence the name “wishbone". Then there was the custom in some homes, especially on farms, where these little bones were neatly cleaned and packed away.
Just before a wedding, they were carefully taken out again and painted silver. Each guest at the wedding got one on their sideplate. Ja-nee, 'n boer maak 'n plan.
Little bones help break the ice
Not only does it cost very little, but it gets you talking to the guest next to you. Are you going to cross your little fingers, pull the bone and then cackle and crow afterwards? There you go, the ice is broken.
The band plays, let's go, burn up the dance floor. When was the last time this ritual happened at someone's table?
It was probably more popular in the days before the internet and smartphones, when people still had time to make fun of small things. The bones of larger animals were used as dice because there was no money for children's toys. You could do puppetry with the shadows on the wall in the dark, with your hands in front of a candle.
Today we have cutting edge, newfangled cooking appliances – air fryers, convection ovens, pressure cookers, food processors, sous vide machines (go read about this on the internet, your mouth will drop), counter ovens, rice cookers, bread makers – and even smart kitchen appliances with integrated software that you can connect to your phone to monitor cooking progress.
And now the question is: What happened to the little wishbone?
Fragile old gem
That delicate old little thing that can create a magical world around a table ... If you could put it on one of these new kitchens' sumptuous, black-gloss reflective table tops, it would look as lonely as a dinosaur's ossicles. No one will know what it is or what to do with it.
Not to mention that soft tail-end (the parson's nose), the neck and the little crop. It now belongs to past times, like shooting stars. And no one will protest, like no rooster crowing over it.
♦ VWB ♦
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