AIBU to think knife is IN FRONT of the fork! (lighthearted, but infuriating)

Huh? How can it be anticlockwise?

This is reminding me of my husband and I roaring at each other in the street because he said it's a cross a street, so I cross the street but he meant we go to the street parallel to us. Add to the confusion there was a parade on, people everywhere and we were trying to keep hold of the kids.

How can it not be clockwise???

Anyway OP, the knife and fork are next to each other - in your diagram and in real life - so you're both wrong.

I would say the knife is 100% in front of the fork because you are holding both of them. That is why your husband's panda and rock analogy does not work. These are not distant objects; they are things you are holding and the perspective is relative to your hands and arms.

If you held your right hand out arm fully extended and your left hand behind it, your right hand is in front. Just as someone standing in a line is in front of you.

It is a very weird analysis to think of the knife being behind the fork as if they are disconnected distant objects.

The fact you are holding them in your hands and their proximity to you means that the perspective is the same as if you were at the back of a line of people looking forwards. You are right and your husband is wrong. SO wrong.

That was another debate held by a friend of mine!

How many bits in a slice?

Let me chuck this into the mix. I asked dh how many bits of toast he wanted, a couple he said, so again I asked how many. He insisted a couple was 2, I said it's a non definitive answer, could be 2 or 3 for example, be more specific. A definitive answer re the couple question would be "a married couple" but couple is not necessarily 2.
It got quite heated and I took to Facebook to debate it. Eventually I put a quote from the dictionary.

couple/ˈkʌpl/A couple is defined as two people who are married, in a romantic relationship, or paired together. It also refers to two items of the same kind, or an indefinite small number (a few), such as "a couple of days". As a verb, it means to connect, join, or pair things together.

And by the way, you're right, the knife is in front of the fork!

I don’t understand how people are agreeing with you! It seems totally obvious to me that the knife is behind the fork and the panda would be hiding behind the rock. If you’re playing hide and seek with your son, surely you hide behind a tree, so that the tree is closer to your son and he sees the tree rather than you. We don’t hide in front of things.

If you were looking at two books, with the red one nearer to you and the blue one farther away from you, surely you’d say the blue one is behind the red one, wouldn't you?

Unless they are moving away from you, the "direction of travel" is towards your eyes - or, in the case of the food, your son's mouth. The fork/red book is closer, so it’s in front.

Where does the panda come into any of this?

Argh, I too lean to "in front" in the OP's situation but struggle with your timing one. Utter confusion in a meeting recently when we needed to reschedule a date from 9th July and options were to move it "forward" or "back" by a week. Clearly (to me) "moving it back" took it to 16th, because that was moving it back in the month and "moving it forward" brought it forward in time to 2nd!
But others thought the exac opposite🤦‍♀️
And when you think about how we use "back in time" they are right, but it still sounds wrong to me!
We settled on just "moving" with no forwards or backwards l, but I am still amazed at the way simple phrases can be interpreted so differently by otherwise sensible people.

Friends of my parents almost divorced over which is the correct side to butter a cream cracker.

Just tell him the knife is a little farther away from him ☺️

Of course, because unlike my DH I'm not absolutely bonkers!

He should have said to turn it to his right, otherwise surely everyone would default to turning it to their own right?!

Surely the common term is "ahead" i.e. they are X hours ahead of us? Which would mean you're right and DH is bonkers misled 😇😂

I would lean towards "in front" but I understand your conundrum. 😂Just as my mind boggles over "forward in time" - IMO later (further away from me), not sooner!

Reminds me about an convo in our house recently. Not about cutlery but about time zones.

i was describing countries east of us (eg in Asia) as as being “before” us in terms of time since the sun rises there before it does here and so they have their morning before us etc. whereas DH thinks of that part of the world as being “after” us since it’s always later there than it is here. We agreed to disagree on that lol

Actually in the case of a sword and shield you’re right 🤔 If I were doing laundry though, and I was holding up two towels together as I folded them, I would refer to the one closer to me as the one in front of me and the other as the one behind.
I think it’s more to do with the subtleties of the meanings of the words than a hard and fast rule about your own body position. In front of means ahead of, behind means beyond, so you can see how they can be occasionally confusing.

Yes but you are not the fork, you are the eater. And from where you sit the knife is behind the fork.

In this picture the hill is behind the tree. I don’t say it is in front of the tree surely? It would be if they were both racing away from me but they aren’t…

Please say you think clockwise.

Hmm. You have a point. Scratch "using". My point stands for things I'm holding though.

For example, if you were holding a sword in one hand and a shield in the other and you were told to hold the sword in front of the shield, I think it would make sense to most people that the shield should be further out from your body than the shield.

So I first thought it's obvious! The knife is in front of the fork. But then, sat thinking about it a bit more I saw our car outside. It's facing away from me with the bonnet facing the road. If a person stood on the pavement they would be in front of the car, but from my perspective they would be behind the car as I wouldn't be able to see them from where I am.

Thanks for making a complicated situation even more complicated!

I was told to turn something I was holding "to the right". So I did and was then told I was doing it wrong, even though he's clearly the one who was wrong. It's been two weeks and we still can't discuss it without emotions running high.

YANBU OP, delightful thread topic