I suffer from arachnophobia, a fear of spiders ,which eventually turned into a full-blown phobia involving lobster tail and crabs. God did not bless me with it at birth, nor do I remember it being a problem when I grew up on a farm. I became phobic in the middle of a lovely dinner at my future in-laws house, while some of their closest friends dined with us. To put it mildly, I made a stunning impression. Days after that memorable evening, lobster tails and crabs moved off my list of edible seafoods.
How this Phobia Began
Between courses that night, my future brother-in-law, Charlie, pulled one of those gosh awful rubber spiders out of his pocket. I knew of them before, but never thought of them as especially scary. Grinning, Charlie started walking the spider across the table toward me. Hundreds of tiny spiders marched under my skin.
“Charlie, don’t do that, please,” I asked. Being one of the nicest boys I ever met, he immediately stopped, not wishing to make me uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” I said.
Enter the Bully!
The ‘gentleman’ at the end of the table next to Charlie, Jim Willes, asked to see the rubber toy. He turned it over and over looking at it from every angle.
To understand what happened, it’s necessary to know where everyone sat at the dinner table sat. Mr. Willes’ chair at the end nearest the living room, faced my father-in-law’s chair at the head of the table. Mrs. Willes, Grandma D., and my mother-in-law lined up on his right, while Bruce, yours truly and Charlie sat on his left. Our side of the table left little room to move chairs sufficiently to get in or out of our seats. Our backs were literally almost up against the wall.
For some insane reason, Mr.Willes thought my discomfort over the spider funny. Without any warning, he reached over and touched my arm with that horrible, wicked-looking, vile, nasty, rubber beast. Though encircled by the table, Bruce, the wall, and Charlie, I cleared that table in a single bound (Supergirl would have been proud), and came to my senses six blocks later, running at a pace that might well have placed in the Olympic trials.
Full-Blown Terror!
Bruce’s yelling, “Maggie, stop! You’ve got to stop! Maggie!” finally got through to me. Shaking with panic, I wasn’t even breathing hard from the adrenalin boosted run. Bruce, on the other hand, looked ready to fall on his face. Gradually, we helped each other back to the house. I refused to go back upstairs with the village idiot, Jim Willes. Shortly thereafter, Bruce took me home.
That incident turned into a full-blown phobia before I knew what was happening. On the one hand I was terrified of things that never affected me before, but on the other hand, my athletics grew with every panic episode! I leaped from one side of our living room to the other in a single bound when a spider appeared on the lampshade beside my chair. Unfortunately, my brother was sitting in the other chair, so I landed square in his lap. I ran like a deer if anyone showed me one of those little beasts (and I was smoking at the time.) Aside from my growing physical prowess, however, I hated this new facet of my life.
Phobia Extends to Shellfish
It wasn’t just spiders that freaked me out; it was any eight-legged critter. My husband and I went to a company picnic…he sat at the table where they dumped huge piles of crabs in front of the picnickers; I sat at the kiddie table eating my hotdog. I couldn’t stand to be near all those legs.
One good arrangement came out of the phobia. When we visited my best friend, Mary Jane, and she cooked crabs for everyone, she picked the meat out of the crabs and I ate it. In return I brought her a steak. She loved to pick meat from crabs and lobster, just didn’t care to eat them. I couldn’t stand to hold them or be close enough to pick them, but loved the delicious sweet meat of the crustaceans.
Seafood Attacks
Mom and dad came to visit for a week. We went to Annapolis Fish Market for fresh oysters, clams, and fish. Mom and I stayed in the car while the menfolk went to get the seafood. They came out carrying several packages and a large covered bucket. I figured they had bought a lot of fish, if they needed that size bucket. On the way home, we chatted about how things were down in Alabama and I filled Mom in on the latest gossip tidbits around my neighborhood.
“Mom, you won’t believe what happened to Jerry Gray,” I told her. “Seems she reached under her bed to get a shoe. It was way up under the headboard. She grabbed the shoe and started to pull it out and a brown recluse spider bit her! She’s having a terrible time with the wound. Evidently, the venom just sort of rots the tissue around the wound unless the doctor can get it stopped. She has a horrible looking place about the size of a fifty cent piece on the top of her hand.”
“I thought that happened to me once,” Mom said. “Thank goodness, though it was a spider; it wasn’t a brown recluse. Those things are nasty.”
Maggie’s Phobia Leads to Olympic Moves
When we reached the house, Mom and I got out of the car and headed in to wash the dishes we had left to soak. Bruce and Dad brought in the seafood. Bruce set the big bucket on the sink beside where I was preparing the dishwater. Mom went up to her room to change blouses. I was squirting dishwashing liquid into the water.
From the corner of my eye, I saw this massive claw come up and out of that bucket and more than one leg was skittering to get out! I screamed. That bottle of Dawn flew up and over onto the dining room table, where it split wide open. I jumped over our kitchen table, landed in the entrance hall. Took one step upon the stair landing and in two more jumps I cleared thirteen steps. One more jump I was at the other side of my 16-foot wide bedroom with the door slamming behind me.
Bruce came up the stairs after me. “Maggie, what’s the matter? Are you all right?
“W-w-w-what w-w-was in t-that b-b-b-bucket?” I stammered.
“We thought everybody might like lobster, so we bought some.” About that time the dim bulb in his head became a bright light. “Oh my gosh, I never even thought of your phobia. Honey, I am so sorry…HAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Humor for the Hubby
That man fell on his knees laughing! “You should have seen you leaping over that kitchen table! First you screamed. Then the dishwashing liquid exploded on the dining room table and you leaped so high you almost took out the kitchen lights! I’m sorry to be laughing, but that was the funniest thing I’ve seen lately.”
Going back downstairs did not sooth my bruised ego or my nerves. The bucket was gone, but Dad, Mom and my kids were laughing just as hard as Bruce. Once I pictured how it must have looked, I wound up laughing right along with them. Bruce and Dad cooked the lobsters while Mom and I removed the spilled liquid off the table. The men were kind enough to shuck those babies before putting the meat on the table. It was my first lobster. How could something so delicious come out of such an ugly package?
Determined to Beat the Phobia
I had a few other incidents over the years, but as Jaimie got older, I began noticing she was becoming afraid of the things because I was. It’s one thing to have fears, but its something else altogether to transfer them to your children. So it was time to start working on my phobia. It had held power over me for way too long.
My first move was to go to the grocery store to buy a couple of large crabs and some lobster tails to have for dinner. The store was ten minutes from the house; I wasn’t buying anything else. Shoot, I was home in just under three hours.
The Marathon Seafood Purchase
I marched into that grocery, smiled briefly at the cashiers, moved toward the seafood counter.
“Hey, Mrs. D., how’s the family,” called Tommy, the butcher. “Looking for steaks today?”
“No, Tommy, I thought today I go with seafood. Do you have any crabs and lobster tails?”
“Sure do. Here have a look at these,” He pulled out the biggest crab I’ve ever seen in my life, precooked and frozen, but still attached to all those legs.
“Boy, that’s sure a big one, isn’t it? Maybe not quite that big, Tommy.”
“Well, the shipment we got in today doesn’t have any smaller ones. Besides, with crabs you get a lot of shell but not so much meat.”
‘Okay, just put it up on the counter. Now how about those lobster tails?” I figured if I started with just the tails, I could work my way up through the body to the whole lobster eventually. That was before I discovered there is only the tail and the body, which limits the pieces you can work your way through.
Tommy pulled out three really beautiful tails. “Those look mighty pretty, Tommy. I’ll take them. Just put them up on the counter.” He tallied up the sales ticket and put it on my (gulp) seafood package.
Will the Phobia Win?
I reached and halfway to the crab and tails, my hand started shaking. The closer I got, the harder it shook, until I resembled a palsied patient by the time I got anywhere near the prize laying on the counter. Tommy was waiting on other customers by that time.
David, my son, came back from getting a soda and I was so tempted to tell him to put them in the basket.
“No,” I said to myself. “You have to put the packages in the basket. You can’t get over your fears if you let someone else do all the dirty work. Poor kid already has to pull legs off the shrimp.”
I made several attempts to pick up that package without success. Tommy noticed my dilemma. “Mrs. D., can I put that in your cart for you?”
Entertaining the Crowd
“No, that’s quite all right, Tommy, I can do it,” I said. A puddle was forming around the defrosting crab. I looked up to make sure David was still nearby and noticed I had drawn quite an audience. Evidently, people enjoy watching a shopper freak and sweat over buying seafood.
“That does it!” I scolded myself. “Are you going to stand here and be humiliated by a package of food?”
My mind said ‘no!’ My body said, ‘Hey, can we think about this a while?’
“Tommy, hold onto that package. I’ll be right back.” I took off for the barbecue section, grabbed the longest tongs and the longest barbecue gloves I could find. Back I went to have it out with the crab and tails!
Donning the gloves, I held the tongs with both hands, captured the package, and began to shake because the beast and I were attached to different ends of the same item. I held those tongs in an iron grip until they were over the cart. Dropped tongs, crab, tails, and the works into the cart. My audience let out a cheer and clapped at the end of my performance. I gave them a shaky bow and proceeded to the checkout counter with David pushing the cart.
I knew without a doubt, that upon arrival at checkout, I could pick that package up with the tongs and we would be out the door. Good plan, bad execution. The crab and lobster tails had landed on top of the tongs.
“That’s not possible. I saw the crab go in first.” I began to think that maybe the crab wasn’t really pre-cooked and dead. Otherwise how would it have moved? I looked around and noticed except for the crowd back at the deli/seafood counter, there weren’t many people in the store. Most of them had spent time watching me instead of shopping, so they should be a little while finishing. That was a relief, because I needed the time to build up courage to get the tongs. I refused to purchase a second pair.
Checking Out
The cashier was a friend of my son’s, who lived at our house more than his while they were growing up. “Hi, Mom, how you doin’?” Mark asked.
“Just fine, honey, except I’m trying to get this crab and lobster tails out of my cart.”
“Hey, don’t worry, Dave will unload it for you.”
“No, I won’t. She won’t let me. She’s trying to kill a phobia,” Dave explained. “Be careful of the crab when it gets up to you. I think it melted an hour ago.”
Mark laughed, “Mom, you gonna let him tease you like that. Come on, put that package up here. You can do it.”
Great, now I had my son, and my sort of adopted son egging me on and drawing the attention of, would you believe, some of the same people who watched my deli performance. Embarrassment is a wonderful tool. It can make you do things no other emotion can.
I put my barbecue-gloved hands over the package, closed my eyes tight and threw the package up on the conveyor belt. I opened my eyes to see Mark wiping moisture off his face where the package had landed before transferring it to the belt.
“Oh, Mark, honey, I am so sorry. Really, I was trying to get it on the counter.” After the day I had been through so far, I was almost in tears. Mark walked around the counter and gave me a bear hug.
“Mom, after all the times you’ve helped me, you feel free to hit me with your groceries any time, if it helps you. But, if I may make a suggestion? Please let Dave take your groceries to the car or you’ll never get home in time to heat and eat them.”
I conceded that point. Dave put the beast and tails in the car. We drove home and he took them into the house. So began the next challenge – getting the crab and tails out of the bags, into the proper cooking pots and pans…but, my friends, that is another long, long story.
Dungeon Crabs w/Fennel – For the Brave at Heart
(I, for one, could easily put them in the Dungeon and keep them there)
INGREDIENTS:
3 Large Fennel Bulbs
1 Large Lemon, thinly sliced
Salt
2 Live (ugh) Dungeon Crabs – 2 1/2 pounds each approx.
Fennel Lemon Tartar Sauce
Bloody Mary Cocktail Sauce (or if freaked out by the multi-legged wonders, just drink a couple of Bloody Marys!)
Ginger Butter
DIRECTIONS:
Step 1 Mince enough of the most tender fennel fronds to make 2 tablespoons and mince enough of the bulb to make 1/4 cup. Set both aside for the Fennel-Lemon Tartar Sauce.
Step 2 Coarsely chop the remaining frongs, stalks and bulb and place in a large (8-Quart) pot.
Step 3 Add Lemon Slices, 1/4 c. salt and enough cold water to come within 3 inches of the top of the pot. Bring to a boil over high heat.
Step 4 While water is heating, either you or someone braver, sets the crabs on a rimmed baking sheet or tray and put them in the freezer. (This dulls their senses to make handling them easier and helps retain all ten fingers. The crab should be well chilled but not frozen; don’t leave them in the freezer more than 30 minutes.) When water has come to a rolling boil, grab each crab securely at the back of the shell (’cause I don’t care what they say, I am not getting near those claws). Gently, but swiftly drop it headfirst into the boiling water.
Step 5 Cover pot, and return water to a boil, reducing heat to medium if necessary to prevent water from boiling over. Cook the beasts 18 to 20 minutes. Drain carefully. Clean crabs (the boiling water didn’t clean them?). Serve hot or chilled with Fennel-Lemmon Sauce, Bloody Mary Cocktail Sauce, and Ginger Butter. For Fennel-Lemon Tartar Sauce http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/fennel-lemon-tartar-sauce For Bloody Mary Cocktail Sauce: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/bloody-mary-cocktail-sauce-0
If not quite so adventurous with sauces, those purchased from your local grocer. with a bit of the primary ingredients of these recipes works beautifully.