What do lobsters dream of?

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with writing and more to do with my father being kind of a terrible (hilarious) person.

Ah Christmas, the season of giving. Also the season of Christmas parties. And what better way to combine the two than a Christmas Yankee swap. In which you buy a cheap gift, draw a number, and then spend the entire night trying to steal the best gift from that bitch who drew number 1. The true spirit of Christmas: stealing.

My mother's gift: a rather practical Mary Lou's coffee gift certificate and some scratch tickets. As it is a party full of officers of the law, it is both useful and appropriate (and not potentially insulting like buying twenty dollars worth of donuts). My gift: two bags of coffee and some pumpkin scones. Again, relatively practical but not fight-worthy by any means. My father's gift: two lobsters. Do we see a break in the pattern here?

Because we know a lobsterman (it's New England, who doesn't?) we even get said lobsters for free. Which he puts into a box and wraps and then brings to the swap. And then the entire gathering spends the next hour trying to steal the lobsters and swap out a package of flashlights (the gift I got stuck with) for something they would actually find delicious. The lobsters are stolen no less than half a dozen times. I steal them, exchanging a perfectly good George Foreman grill for them, and had believed to get away with them as the next several steals were for a bottle of rum. That is until a perfectly nice woman with several young children steals them from me and leaves me with said flashlights (which is a terrible gift by the way).

Now I would be quite fine with that if it were not for this woman's intentions. Did she plan on eating the sweet sweet meat of lobster goodness, which personally I don't go for but I've heard from some is quite tasty? Nope. Not even a chance. She wanted to set them into the water and let them go free, Hollywood style. Now, wait a second there. Freedom? For lobsters? That have been out of the water for eight hours and probably had their tiny lobster lives flash before their eyes several times as small children tormented them for entertainment at a Christmas party? The closest body of water also, is a freshwater pond so unless you intend to drive an hour and a half to the ocean and set them free, chances are they aren't going to make it home to see their lobster families for Christmas.

Now when my father hears of this he is understandably upset. Lobsters are for eating and sometimes for dressing up but not for freeing back into the wild. So what does a well-informed, slick talking officer of the law to do? Tell the woman that the the lobsters have been out of the water too long, they will not survive. Of course lobsters start to produce ammonia when they are on land, if she were to release them back into water now they would drown. They are going to die either way so would she be interested in a trade for some coffee beans and he will tell the children he is taking the crustaceans to a 'nice friendly lobster farm'? Not wanting to be a monster and the cause for the death of two noble sea creatures, the woman complies. My mother and father enjoy a delicious lobster dinner.

And the story about lobsters being out of water too long, producing ammonia, and drowning? Utter bullshit. But the way he said it, you'd have assumed he had a PhD in lobster physiology and was the world's leading expert on the hard-shelled bastards. I will give him credit. The man is good.