Flashes of Panic

Saturday evening there was a family birthday dinner (not mine) featuring lobsters which, if not running free that very day, had at least been crated and floating live in the New Meadows river less than an hour before arriving at our plates.

I’m not a great fan of lobster (heresy, I know,) but I made my way through one. My younger niece, however, was not fond of them at all, even though she didn’t have one on her plate; she didn’t want to sit next to one (not likely, since the only non-lobstered plate was her father’s) or even smell them. She wanted to eat on the porch, and have someone eat out there with her, but since everyone had a lobster that wasn’t a solution either.

“Don’t tell her they’re big insects,” I whispered to my brother.

She was a bit happier when the lobster wreckage was (eventually) cleared away and replaced with cake and ice cream.

Now playing: Mr. Right Now from If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Now by The Nields