It Was a Different Day When He Killed the Crab

ROUGH DRAFT

They woke up really early Christmas Day 1988 and found, to their surprise, different kinds of Christmas presents than they had imagined the night before. Instead of toys and games, they found beachwear, flippers, snorkels, masks, and other diving gear. Huh?

As their parents made them rush through examining all the gifts and opening the presents wrapped in unknown wrapping papers from relatives, they began sensing something odd in mom and dad's comments...they were not-too-subtly hinting at something. Finally, they spilled the beans, "Pack all this stuff up, we're going to the Bahamas!" Mac and Susanna simultaneously thought the same exact thought, "HOLY SHIT!"

They drove all day long to Ft. Lauderdale, FL in their gray 1987 Ford Taurus, stopping only for gasoline, Cokes, and peanut-butter crackers, and to pick up their friends in Jacksonville. They arrived after dark, and the only restaurant open was a Steak and Ale, which they happily slummed to. The next morning they got up and flew to Nassau, then to Great Exuma, and then on a little Piper Cub, whose pilot had especially bad body odor, to Long Island, Bahamas and the Stella Maris Resort. There they met up with their friends Burt and Lynn. Mac awoke the next morning to a strange sunlit white-walled bedroom, marking the only time in his life when he awoke and didn't know where he was nor could her remember how he got there. As fun as the trip would be while he was there, learning to SCUBA-dive amidst very attractive European women with different standards of bathing-suit decorum than Americans had, it was because of his actions on the last day that he would leave Stella Maris wishing he had never come, all because of the life of an insignificant stupid little crab. We'll let him explain.

My first day there, I woke up and my dad shipped me off to get my SCUBA-diving certification. I went on three dives a day, every day while we were there. It was awesome, one of the best experiences ever. We'd come home a couple of hours before dark every day, and I would climb down the coral cliffs to the rocks and the ocean. Every day, I found what I assumed was the same crab sitting in a little tidal pool. He would raise his claws up in defense when I poked at him, tenderly, with a stick. This happened all nine days we were there. I would go down and find him, and then mess with him a little. It was great sport in my mind.

On our last day there, I went down, a little sad that I was leaving paradise for Mr. O'Connells Physical Science classes and my freshman year of high school. I found the crab standing on a rock. For no reason that I can remember, I picked up a heavy flat rock and smashed him to bits. I turned around with a feeling in my gut that I had just done something horrible. While I never thought twice at killing an insect, I had just killed something for sport. It didn't give me a feeling of power; I felt horrible inside. As I climbed back up the hill, I wanted to vomit, but nothing happened. I was strangely quiet (my parents said so) most of the way back to Florida. On the drive home, I tried to assuage my guilt by listening to Van Halen's OU812 and Bon Jovi's New Jersey at a high volume on my brand new Aiwa portable tape deck, but all I could see was the ruin that had been the crab after I smashed it. It haunts me to this day, and that's why sometimes when I'm surrounded by family, wife, children, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, I feel like if anyone says anything to me, I'll never be able to stop crying.