When you grow up in Kentucky, the closest you get to a lobster is the Red Lobster, and I have to admit that I have never eaten there. I also have to admit that because of a bad incident with crabs (insert joke here) when I was 10 I have avoided shell fish most of my life.

Flash forward a million years (31 to be exact) and I arrive in Maine. The home of the lobster. The place I am told you can't come and not eat the native food. So it was decided since today was my last day in Maine that L.M. would cook lobster for dinner and I would try it. There would be chicken for back-up, but lobster was dinner. I was willing. I am always open to trying new things and what the fuck it's just lobster how bad can it be.

What I was not expecting was living creatures being boiled to death. What I was really not expecting was L.M. apologizing to every lobster she shoved in the pot. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! She cooked ten lobsters and she repeated this little dialogue ten times. Then repeated it some more when she had to rearrange them in the pot. The were family pets before they had even begun to cook. Still I was doing okay. She finished dinner and we sat down to eat.

It started okay. There were actually six of us. M.M. and L.M. M.M.'s father and step-mother, and L.M.'s grandmother. L.M. walked us thru the process of obtaining the meat from a lobster. Pull the little legs off and suck out the juice and meat. I did it and thought I was going to throw up. It tasted fine. Better than I expected. But I couldn't get past the idea that it had been alive 30 minutes earlier. It had little eyes. I forced myself to continue. One claw. Then the next. I continued, each bight getting harder than the last. The only thing that kept me going was the vegetables on my plate and the Corona I had to drink. Finally all that was left was the body. And I was done. I could do it no more.

I don't remember the last time I ate something that I had seen alive. I supposed I did as a kid since my dad hunted and fished. But it's been YEARS. I just couldn't do it today. M.M. who's a liberal vegetarian has convinced herself this will make me a vegetarian. I don't know. I know the thought of meat right now repulses me. The thought of eating anything that was once living and breathing repulses me. Maybe I just need to get a good night's sleep. Maybe, I need to order a big steak tomorrow night and just do it. Maybe meat filled days are a thing of the past.

In the mean time, my Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch Ice Cream is hitting the spot and I know no one and no thing died in it's creation.