Baltimore Sun

A dispute between two employees of a Fallston business over a meatball during lunch Thursday led to a stabbing, the Harford County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies were called around 11:10 a.m. to the business in the 2300 block of Belair Road, where they learned there had been an argument over one employee eating the other’s meatball from his lunch, Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Cristie Kahler said.

A fight ensued and the employee who had eaten the meatball was stabbed in the arm by the employee whose lunch he had taken the meatball from, Kahler said.

The victim, a 36-year-old Aberdeen man, was taken to a local hospital and later discharged.

The assailant, a 31-year-old Edgewood man, fled the scene.

An arrest warrant has been issued but the man had not been served as of Tuesday afternoon, Kahler said.

To be honest, this story is less a story about poor behavior among two colleagues in the work place and more of a story on society’s current relationship with the meatball.  Back in the day, it was nothing but “Spaghetti and Meatball this” and “Meatball that”…Americans dinner tables were just lousy with meatballs.  It was all about meatballs.  People even started being defined by their meatballs…how big, how rotund, how soft, and how juicy:

“Have you heard from Bill at all lately?”

“Which Bill?  Bill with the meatballs that are so big that they make him walk funny? Or Bill down the street who lost one of his meatballs when he was hopping a chain link fence running from the Cops in high school?” 

Now, it’s a totally different story.  I have north of 450 contacts in my phone and I’m fairly certain not one of them knows how to roll a meatball.  Meatballs are so scarce that some of us have no qualms about stabbing coworkers just to get a little nibble.  We need more Meatballs!  Go ahead moms everywhere; keep rolling out that cute meatless veggie red sauce bullshit on spaghetti night.  It’s only a matter of time before your kid is pawning your wedding bands to get their next meatball fix.  We’re seeing it all too often these days.  If you don’t want little Suzie hanging out behind the bowling alley in a year or two, “creatively” generating cash for meatballs, then it’s time to start rolling that meat!