An Unsolicited Dining Companion
He is sitting the by himself in the bar at McCormick and Schmick’s. This is okay, I eat by myself in restaurants all the time and I am female. Yes, it is harder for us then for you others, but another matter that. There he is. “Yes, sir, we do have a one and a half pound lobster. Our last one for the evening.” So, he works his way through two plates of assorted other appetizers and at last it arrives, the lobster, shining in its slightly luminescent red glory. Is he awed; slightly worshipful, humbled by the feast laid before him? No, the fool is on his cell phone. So he lays into the lovely thing, this piece of nirvana, one handed, the other hand occupied with clutching his cell phone to the cheek he is determined to stuff.
Now lobster should not, cannot be gobbled down one handedly, distractedly while nattering away on a cell phone. Lobster is to be savored, eaten slowly, bite by bite, to lovingly dip each morsel in drawn butter and then slowly savor its delicate taste and texture. Delighting in its sweetness and licking ones lips. Hmm…. maybe licking someone else’s lips, but I digress. Here before me is my unsolicited dining companion, the result of an unhappy conjunction of circumstance. He is trying ineffectually to detach the tail meat, which he cannot do without a knife and fork, two hands and a chunk of focus. The best he can do is to roll the tail meat as if it were spaghetti into a huge ball on his fork, then he holds down the shell with the elbow of the cell phone hand and jerks the mass of tail meat away from the shell.
Okay, dip and nibble I think, that could work, but I have forgotten who I am dealing with here and I watch shocked as he shoves he whole ball of tail into his mouth. He is perplexed, what to do? Too much to chew, can’t swallow, worse, can’t talk! Alas, he is forced to hang up the cell phone and attempt to sort the situation out.
Consummate foolishness and a sad waste of a lovely lobster.