My family went to a local restaurant. After looking over the menu they decided to order an appetizer. I love most appetizers, but not all of them. For instance, I hate those fried onion thingies. They’re supposed to look like some kind of a flower. In fact, they even call them an onion blossom. I don’t get it. I think they look more like a fried onion thingy. But then, I hate onions so it doesn’t matter what they’re supposed to look like. They smell like fried onions too. That smell reminds me of a diner down at the Jersey Shore. I was a teenager then. I think it burned down.
    Anyway, there we were, sitting at this restaurant, studying the menu. I was hoping my family wouldn’t order that onion thingy and what a relief, they didn’t. Just when I was getting ready to celebrate, the waitress came over with the “specials” for the day. They were hand written on a plain, white piece of paper. Actually, they were scribbled and looked like a doctor’s prescription for pain. There’s a good reason for this. Mainly, it’s because the food on that menu is old. It was probably bought on Monday, the week before. But who wants to order old food? That’s right! No one wants to, so they came up with a clever idea called “Specials!”
    Usually the items on these plain, white pieces of paper are stuff like old chicken and old beef. Once in awhile they might try to throw a few chunks of old tuna on there, but that can get risky. We generally don’t order anything from that paper. But this time they had appetizers on it, so my family got all daring. There were the usual things, including the fried onion thingy, but my family ordered something else. They ordered crab legs.
    I like fish. Ok, I like most fish. Well, ok, I like certain fish, but I hate fish with small bones, that no matter how well you fillet them, still have a gazillion teeny weenie bones in them. Ok, I like Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks because they grind everything up and make it into this fish stick paste and then deep fry it in bread. At least the bones are gone. But I don’t like crab legs.
    These things arrived at our table, all reddish-orange, looking like something from a bad Japanese monster movie.  They were sticking up in the air, as if straining for one last chance to grab some helpless person in a pinch of death before the boiling hot water ended their miserable little lives. I’m sure it could have been The Attack of the Killer Claws. Even in death, those claws looked formidable and able to inflict lots of damage.
    The waitress then brought out some weapons. She said they were for cracking open the shells on the crab legs. But I know it was just in case these monsters came back to life. That way my family could hurl the weapons at the crabs as we all went screaming from the restaurant.
    When my family began to crack open the crabs (did I mention this isn’t a delicate meal?) they said, “Wow, this smells just like the ocean!” I smiled, choking back the reaction to those alien legs sticking up all over the plate.
    I was thinking, “Uhhh, no, this smells like it came from the “specials” menu and has been stored in the chef’s foot locker for about two weeks.”
    Crab legs, ummm ummm!

Questions or comments
Email Frank at:
fparrish@zoominternet.net