Who was the first person to eat a lobster?
Whoever it was, they had more courage than I’ll ever have.
For hundreds of years we’ve all been trained to know these large, insect-like crustaceans are great tasting (that, and the “buying lobsters means I’m rich” price, are what make them not look ugly). But think about the first person(s) who decided it’d be a good idea to boil one alive, rip it apart, scrape out the guts and then eat them:
“What in God’s name is that abomination scurrying around in our fishing net!?”
“It has got to be the ugliest, nastiest, creepiest, most alien looking creature I’ve ever scene.”
“Does it have eyes?”
“Can it talk?”
“Should we give it a name?”
“Are those whiskers?”
“Let’s eat it.”
The first lobster-eater had no clue what they were getting into. Chances are they only went through with it because they lost a bet or were trying to die quickly before getting strapped into a Medieval torture rack. Either way they struck gold.
Where’s that trail-blazing spirit today?
If we weren’t so scared, cockroaches might be crawling around in tanks at our local grocery store with rubber bands bound around their slightly hairy digits. Who’s to say they don’t taste good? If lobsters didn’t happen to work out, those gross little critters were probably next on the “it can’t taste any worse than it looks” list of delicacies. I mean, it’s not like lobsters have blown past roaches in the bathing suit portion of the competition, right? Anyway, everyone knows it’s what’s on the inside that really counts.
But our taste buds will never know what’s going on in there because none of us have the stones to munch on cockroaches.
Some argue we have common sense instead. I say we’re just complacent.
How could we shave with a Mach 9 today if a few tough guys hadn’t nicked their jugulars using a straight razor back in the day?
How would we ever know corn beef hash was so good if some brave soul hadn’t test-driven a can of his dog’s moist food in a moment of weakness?
How would we be able to drink Long Island Ice Teas if the bartender who invented them back in the 1970s believed all the bogus scientific reports claiming the cocktail did not actually cause one to time travel to the next morning?
Most of all, how would we have submarines if Tom Clancy had listened to his mother (“they’re all going to laugh at you,” she told him) and not written “The Hunt for Red October?”
We wouldn’t have anything if we didn’t take risks. Now, we already know all the risks – so, it’s like, why bother being adventurous?
Smoking kills you. Wrestling crocodiles kill you. Going to Little League games kills you. Partying with Phil Spector kills you (just like Ronnie said).
Check those off the to-do’s.
Worse than that, we found out all the things we thought were dangerous are now safe.
Driving with diabetes and a heart condition (It’s cool, now there’s OnStar). Bowling (with inflated bumpers in the gutters, no one gets below an eighty and wrecks the snack bar in anger). The Gotti Family (let’s be honest, bad people don’t get TV shows).
What fun is it always knowing or changing the outcome to make everything come out right?
Let the chips fall. You might end up dead or in prison. Maybe you’ll end up on the beach eating lobster.
Win some, lose some.