DH’s parents and sister came to visit us from out of town last week. We’re coastal. They’re very much not. Where do you go for a celebratory dinner when visiting the locals? Somewhere kitschy, of course! We headed out to a touristy restaurant right on the water in celebration of my MIL’s 60th birthday. It was one of those places that sold t-shirts and bumper stickers, surfer music and the like. Kind of loud, pretty tacky, but altogether fun. The wait staff all wore t-shirts that had some sentiment pertaining to crabs. I’ve never seen a steak house with waiters wearing shirts that said, “where’s the beef?” but c’est la vie, I suppose. Anywhoo, our waitress’ shirt said ‘I went to Sammy’s Seafood House* and my waitress gave me crabs’. Others said things along the lines of ‘Got crabs?’ or ‘Crabs. The gift that keeps on giving’. Haha. Oh, those witty marketing suits! At first, it was kind of embarrassing. It wouldn’t have been normally, but Mr. Lobster’s parents are uber conservative and his dad, especially, doesn’t find much humor in things that most of us find hilarious. They seemed to not be too bothered by it so we sat there and tried to blend in with the other tourists. At least none of us had to wear one of those adult sized bibs the waitresses tie on when you order something especially messy. I digress.
As dinner went on, my father in law inquired about the shirts to the rest of us at the table. “I don’t get it” he said. We all shared a ‘are you serious?’ look and asked what, exactly, it was he didn’t understand. “I don’t understand what’s supposed to be so funny. I mean, you order crabs at this place, but why all the fanfare?”
This is a man in his early sixties. He’s not stupid. But he really did not get it.
My sis-in-law says, “Um, dad, crabs is an STD. It’s a play on words.” He looked at us like, really? and then was so tickled at his naïveté that he started giggling. Then the rest of us started laughing. Even the Lobster children started laughing.
I felt the perfect opportunity to make fun of him one more time and nudged him with, “you know, if you’d just spring for cable maybe you’d know these things!” I don’t know how you can be in your sixties and not know about crabs. It’s one thing to not be up on the latest disease craze, but crabs? I think he was living in a bomb shelter during the sexual revolution.
One of my favorite sites published a picture which was necessary to share to push the issue even more:
I mean, how could I not send this?
*name changed to protect the innocent crabs.
