My sister gifted me some crabs that her next door neighbor had prepared. The thought of them sounded delicious, but as soon as I opened the container, I was apprehensive.
Although I knew they were dead, I braced myself as if they would move. Even after I warmed one of them up, along with some hush puppies, I cautiously removed the crab from the air fryer as if the added heat may have reanimated it.
Why did Mom have to join me at the kitchen table? After all, she and Dad had already eaten over an hour earlier. She took one look at my bowl and began pestering me.
“Don’t eat the dead man. You’re not going to eat the dead man, are you? You’re going to take the dead man out, right?”
Clearly, the whole point of her conversation was to see how many different sentences she could make using the phrase “dead man.”
In the meantime, I nibbled away at the skinny legs, which had next to no meat, but served to delay the inevitable. Finally, I started in on the body. As soon as I removed the majority of the shell, the whole thing was as appetizing as a dissection. Nothing looked edible.
I asked Mom which part was the dead man. For all her nagging, she had no idea, which confirmed my earlier suspicion. She advised me to ask my sister, who conveniently walked in the front door at that moment.
Once my sister told me to only eat the white meat, where the legs had been attached, I finally came to my senses and recognized the familiar-looking crab meat. Although it was well-seasoned, the usual dining pleasure was barely there.
Next time, I’ll stick to big crab legs, crab meat that has already been incorporated into a dish and lobster tail. Amen.