So me and my girlfriend, her sister and friend are at my house last night. It’s her birthday, so she decides she wants to get down on a feast of crab legs. Who am I to argue? I love crab legs. We get those little suckers boiling and within less than half an hour, they are ready to be eaten.
But I forget that I don’t have any butter in the house. I look at my friend, she looks at her sister, her sister looks at her friend, her friend looks back at her sister and my friend looks at me. Oh heck yeah we are going out to get the butter. Thank goodness for late night stores. So just before the witching hour, we are out the door and on our little adventure to get some butter to eat with our crab legs.
Did I mention that earlier that day when shopping for the crabs, we bought about $50 worth of crab legs? Got a fairly decent deal. They were $8.99 per pound. Fat little legs were strewn all over the seafood window. A pudgy little man rolls up to the counter as we are discussing how much we want and which ones.
“Are you getting anything?” he says.
“Give us a minute to decide,” I respond, holding up my first finger.
We’re jabbering away. The pudgy man is looking impatient, as though he wasn’t going to be there all night and we were in his space loitering in front of the crab section, seemingly not serious about our order. I mean, do people often loiter in front of the seafood section?
“We’re ready,” I said after we deliberated a few minutes.
“How can I help you?” he asks quasi politely.
“We want some of each section of the legs you have there,” my friend says. “Can we get six pieces of those in the back?”
“Oh, lemme see how much those are. What’s that price again?” the pudgy man says.
“Um, sir, the price is right here, we know how much they are. $8.99 per pound,” I respond annoyed.
“Yeah, that’s right. So what do you want now?”
Blank stares all around.
“We want six of those in the back.”
The pudgy man with his pudgy fingers picks up five. More blank stares from us, the loiterers.
“Six sir. You need to add another one to the scale,” my friend says.
The pudgy man is busy punching into his little scale the weight, so the amount will come up on the screen. He shares the cost with us.
“Um, we didn’t ask you that. We want you to add another leg.”
Of course, we are all wondering what the heck is wrong with this man. But the silent recognition of his issue surfaced and we all understood. Clearly we had no clue what we were getting into with the crabs. I mean, we couldn’t possibly know that we wanted six legs, nor that we were planning on getting more. Just a few delicate (brown) women wishfully thinking they can afford to buy all that crab.
“Ok,” he responds.
“Ok, can we now get $30 worth of these longer pieces right here,” my girlfriend says while pointing at the pieces she wants. “It’s my birthday, I’m enjoying some crab tonight. Just me and the crab, nothing on the side,” she says to us.
We chuckle.
“This is $19,” the man says.
“We asked for $30 worth of those legs,” I say.
At this point, we are exasperated and wondering if the man is slow. That’s it, maybe he lost a bolt and something was slipping lose. The gears were maybe rusty and needed oiling. Either way, he seemed to not want to do what we asked.
Finally, after a few failed attempts, he finds his way to make the scale read somewhere near $30. I was starting to wonder if he wanted to sell us the crab. It was as though he were protecting it from purchase or something. Save the crab legs. I wondered if he had a tee shirt to that affect.
Anyhoo, back to the butter. So we’re driving to the store, chatting it up and almost night dreaming about the crab legs that smelled wonderful. We get to the store and power walk to get the butter and a couple other items. We power walk back to the car and power drive back to the house.
The crabs were still in the pot. Luckily.
Like carnivores, we sat down, crabs spread out all over the table, and began to dig in. Of course, the less experienced crab eater in the group, me, must use that silly implement I can’t remember the name of to crack the crab legs. Sorta like a nutcracker. While these ladies, clearly experts, used their hands, I was relegated to amateur with my little silver implement. That’s right, their hands. I was amazed. I felt like a child who was still up to D and had yet to know what the remaining letters of the alphabet were. Without a word, I put down the nutcracker, or should I call it a crabcracker, and decided to see if I could roll with the big girls. Lobster claws and spikes attempted to dig out my hands and fingers as I tried to break a piece in half, as my other little carnivore friends were doing. I almost cut myself. And can you believe that none of the three ever even looked at my crabcracker, much less picked it up to use? I hung my head in shame and quietly cracked open my crab shells with the crabcracker.
The crab legs didn’t have a chance. Empty shells lay strewn all over the table as we each picked flecks of crab here and there from our empty plates.
The birthday crab fest was successful. Her celebration was complete. Now, she could go off into the world, having attained a new level, whatever that may be. And all because of a fabulous night of crab legs and butter.
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