at least he scraped the lungs off

He came in and sat at the table across from me - a man with white hair and a wrinkled, ill-fitting, suit. In place of the suit jacket, he wore a sweater draped over his shoulders. The seat across from him was empty, and he looked down at a magazine, barely lifting his eyes and magazine when the waitress covered his table with brown paper.

This little scene takes less imagination to figure out than most of my observations. He's in town on business. He's not incredibly popular with his co-workers, but he's pretty sure of himself as a traveller. Instead of eating with the others at the hotel, he decided to find a restaurant renowned for its crabs and experience them all by himself. His status as an out-of-towner was sealed in my eyes when the crabs were delivered.

He picked up a crab and held its face towards him, poking it with a knife as I made no effort not to stare.

Oh, honey. That's wrong.

As he poked the crab in the face, he tried turning the knife between the top and bottom shell, as if it were an oyster, but of course to no avail.

So wrong.

After trying the 'pry it open with a knife' method, he picked up the mallet and whacked it near its bottom. Then he returned immediately to the knife prying at the spot he had just crushed. Seeing that this didn't work, he started to peel up the tab with his knife.

Yes! Yes, now you're onto something.

I cheered him on from the table, perhaps a little too loudly, excited that this novice was now on the right track and would soon be enjoying the delicious crabmeat that was locked away in front of him. Once the back shell was removed, he cracked the body down the middle pretty well, but my support for Mr. Businessman soon faded when I saw what happened next.

He lifted the crab half to his mouth and bit straight into the meat, attempting to suck it out of the body as if it were a crayfish. Well it wasn't a crayfish, and the result was that he had to spit out some shell, and most of the meat was still left attached to the legs. Rather than pick the remaining meat, he tossed the whole thing out with the leg, and repeated the process with the next one. I looked on in horror as he continued with the speed of a lion devouring its kill, blood on the face and paws, in too much of a rush to separate any one organ from another.

Next, he came to a claw and tried to crack it with his fingers. After one half-hearted attempt, he threw the entire thing into the brown paper bag next to his table, usually reserved for shells and lungs, but in this case filled with delicious yet untouched meat. All that salty claw meat would never even be tasted. The mauling of probably six crabs was finished in under fifteen minutes, and I was left sitting in judgment of this man, too sure of himself, yet unaware of all that he was missing.

Oh, honey. So wrong.