The Truth About Lobsters

They can be hypnotized!

One of the worst things I’ve ever done to another human being involved a lobster. She was my girlfriend at the time. Betsy, not the lobster.

Betsy was a knock-out – beautiful, smart, funny, vivacious. A fellow Jumbo. That’s the nickname for students at Tufts University.

The moniker owes its origin to P.T. Barnum. You may know him as the Barnum & Bailey circus supremo connected to the quote “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Barnum was a generous man. When fellow philanthropist Charles “Sonny” Tufts needed funding to establish a university in his name, Phineas Taylor Barnum was on board.

So when the circus’ star attraction – Jumbo the elephant – went to the great savannah in the sky, Barnum had the preserved pachyderm packed-up and shipped to Tufts.

Jumbo dominated P.T. Barnum Hall until faulty wiring set the Hall on fire and burned Jumbo to a crisp.

In 2015, Jumbo returned to campus in the form of a bronze statue. Cost unknown, but I bet it didn’t cost peanuts.

Where was I? Lobsters. Right!

According to the Maine Department of Marine Resources, "lobsters were so plentiful Native Americans used them to fertilize their fields and bait their hooks for fishing.”

In fact, “lobsters were considered 'poverty food.’ They were harvested by hand along the shoreline and served to prisoners and indentured servants.”

In 2022, American lobsterpeople harvested 119 million pounds of lobby, valued at $515 million. The current market price for a lobster in Rhode Island – where our story takes place – is $20 a pound.

So, from cockroach of the sea to seafood delicacy, no longer tempting prisoners’ palates. A crustacean that my GF had never tasted before that fateful afternoon.

Betsy was a bit squeamish about the killing part of the lobster eating process. So my friends and I boiled the lobsters in the kitchen while she entertained in the dining room.

I won’t say I pretended that a lobster was a fighter plane, nose down, headed for the sea – pull up! pull! pull up! – because that would be cruel.

But cruel I was. Because I knew a secret about lobsters: they can be hypnotized.

If you stroke a live lobster down the center of its exoskeleton, they go rigid. Just for fun, you can stand the hypnotized lobster on its head. And there it stands, for maybe a minute.

I’m not blaming marijuana for the awful, terrible idea that came into my head: cook three lobsters, hypnotize one and serve it to Betsy, where it would suddenly come alive.

The lobster, not Betsy. She was fully functional before the incident in question. Afterwards, not so much.

Anyway, I deeply, sincerely regret what happened next. Let me put it this way…

I’m not intimately familiar with the laws of physics. But I’m pretty sure a human being can’t jump four feet straight into the air from a sitting position – unless a lobster re-animates on their plate.

By the same token, there are few women capable of emitting a blood-curdling scream to rival Janet Leigh in Psycho, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween or Marilyn Burns in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Betsy is amongst their number.

I like to think we didn’t laugh at Betsy’s distress. I certainly hope we didn’t put her off lobster for life. I suspect, however, that her decision to be a left-leaning political activist is somehow connected.

The lobster imbroglio didn’t ruin our relationship. I still feel guilty about it, but I’ve never done anything that dastardly again. Nor would I.

If I’m tempted to prank, I’m guided by H.R. “Bob” Haldeman’s account of the infamous "hush money" tape of March 21, 1973.

In it, President Nixon and his aides discussed raising $1m to pay off Watergate burglars’ blackmail threats. According to Haldeman, Nixon's response was, "We can do that but it would be wrong."

In fact, Nixon said…

You could get a million dollars. You could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. It is not easy, but it could be done. But the question is who the hell would handle it? Any ideas on that?

Where was I? Oh right. Not making someone a figure of fun.

Bob’s lie is my mantra. It helps me ignore my favorite quote from P.T. Barnum: “Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.” And that’s about It, so to speak.

Wait! For future reference, a live lobster plunged into boiling water curls its tail (as above). The tail remains curled during and after cooking – until and unless someone straightens it out. The more you know…