Bruce’s Lobster For Neighbors
When my mother made chicken soup, she would make the chicken dance while she washed it in the sink, singing a song like “Hello, Bruce. I’m Charlie the Chicken.” The psychological effects of the Charlie the Chicken dance have never been fully calculated, but are demonstrated herein by the astonishing tale of “I’ll Never Cook A Living Thing Again”, or as I’m calling it here: “Lobster For Neighbors”.
First, buy a lobster. If you notice that they get less expensive per pound as they get bigger, ask yourself: “Is there a good reason for this or do people just think the littler ones are cuter?” If you answer yourself “But the bigger ones are so cheap per pound!”, you may come to regret that decision, after you pick the biggest one they have.
Now, this is important. DO NOT NAME YOUR LOBSTER! I named mine Larry; Larry the Lobster.
Next, take your lobster buddy to his new home. Larry rode with me on the blue line to the red line to Harvard Square in his cardboard box. After the long and somewhat bumpy trip, I put him in the sink with some ice water as instructed by the fish monger and made him do the ceremonial dance: “Hello, Bruce! I’m Larry the Lobster! Cook me and then eat me, please!”
You may realize, as I did, that you don’t have a pot remotely big enough for a Godzilla-sized lobster. Fortunately a neighbor came to my rescue with a bona fide lobster cooking pot, identifiable because of the happy little lobsters adorning the outside of the pot. Maybe the happy little lobster pictures are supposed to fool the lobster; to make the lobster think: “Hey, that big tub of boiling hot water looks like lots of fun! Look at those happy guys!”
Meanwhile, after all this time, you might notice that your lobster isn’t moving around very much anymore. Larry didn’t move at all. He had gone to the great kelp bed in the sky. To Crustacean heaven. He was an ex-lobster. He’s dead, Jim. If you find yourself in a similar situation, call up the fishmonger where you bought it and ask him what to do. He’ll probably assure you that if the sad event was very recent and he’s been in ice water, your dear departed lobster will still be just as delicious as he was the minute that he first set eyes — or whatever you call those things that lobsters have — on you.
Boil the water and, perhaps with a note of inevitable sadness, prepare to drop the lobster in. After all, he was going to have to die, right? Poor guy, you may think to yourself, I’ll miss that mysterious smile of his.
Pick up your lobster very carefully, and drop him in the boiling water. Because Larry was already dead, I picked him up very casually without thinking too much about it. At this point, don’t be too surprised if your lobster wakes up. That’s what happened to me, Larry woke up and had serious reservations about my plans for him. He was not taken in, not for a second, by the happy little lobster pictures.
He was screaming about hiring an attorney and made all kind of threats. So what could I do? It was him or me. I dropped him. I dropped him in the boiling water.
But then — and it helps if you can imagine the Bernard Hermann Psycho “stabbing music” here — Larry managed to grab the side of the pot with one claw. The water boiling around him didn’t slow him down. He seemed to be pulling himself out of the pot!
Well, I panicked. I took the lid of the lobster pot and repeatedly banged it on Larry’s claw until he finally let go. At long last, Larry fell into the water, and magically turned that beautiful red of a wonderfully cooked lobster.
Larry ended up being eaten by the neighbor who lent me the lobster pot. I just couldn’t do it in the end. I hope your neighbor enjoys his lobster as much as mine did! Cheers!