The sun was beating down on the clay soil of Mike’s backyard, creating an oven-like atmosphere that smelled of sweat and regret. Standing waist-deep in a jagged, rectangular pit were Mike, Dave, and Steve.

They had been digging for six hours. They had progressed roughly two feet.

Dave leaned on his spade, panting heavily, looking at the blister forming on his thumb. He looked up at the rim of the hole, then over at the empty driveway.

“I’m just going to say it again,” Dave wheezed. “Why didn’t we get an excavator?”

Mike, who was currently trying to pry a melon-sized rock out of the wall of the pit with a pickaxe, didn’t even look up. “Because, Dave, rental for a mini-excavator is $350 a day, plus a delivery fee, plus insurance.”

“My back is worth $350,” Dave countered.

“Plus,” Mike grunted, finally dislodging the rock, “You have to be certified to not destroy the neighborhood. Remember when you rented the woodchipper? You almost chipped your own Honda Civic.”

“That was a depth perception issue,” Dave muttered. “But seriously. One scoop. One scoop with a machine and this whole day’s work would be done. We are using 17th-century technology to build a 21st-century koi pond.”

Steve, the quietest of the three, stopped shoveling. He was the meticulous one. He had been carefully shaping the corner of the hole, trying to get a perfect 90-degree angle. He looked at his shovel, which was clunky and covered in mud.

“You know,” Steve said, staring at the dirt. “If we’re talking about technology… why are we using shovels?”

Mike and Dave stared at him. “What?”

“Well,” Steve continued, “The excavator is too big. It destroys the grass, it costs money, and it’s dangerous. But the shovel… the shovel is clumsy. I keep hitting the edge. If we really wanted precision… why not use spoons?“

The silence in the pit was deafening. A crow cawed overhead.

“Spoons,” Mike repeated flatly.

“Yeah,” Steve said, warming up to the idea. “Like soup spoons. You have total control. You could carve this wall perfectly smooth. No accidental over-digging.”

Mike wiped sweat from his eyes. “Steve, do you know how much dirt is in a cubic yard? It’s about two thousand pounds. A spoon holds about half an ounce.”

“But the finish would be incredible,” Steve argued.

“Steve,” Dave said, rubbing his lower back. “If we used spoons, we would be digging this hole until our grandchildren were born. We wouldn’t be building a pond; we’d be excavating our own graves because we’d die of old age down here.”

“So,” Steve summarized. “The excavator is too fast and expensive.”

“And the spoon is too slow and insane,” Dave finished.

Mike kicked the shovel back into the dirt. “And that is why we are here, in the middle, suffering with shovels. Too cheap for a machine, too smart for cutlery. Now keep digging, or I’m going to bury you both.”