While cleaning up the bachelor pad yesterday, I stumbled across an old gift certificate for a dinner for two from an ex involving lobsters. Now, I love lobsters, but I thought about what’s the best way to deal with this. After a while, I didn’t like any of the options presented, so I decided to return the gift card with a sob story letter.
Customer Service
LobsterAnywhere.com
308 South Broadway
Salem, NH 03079Dear Mr. or Miss LobsterAnywhere.com
I’ve got a dilemma. For Valentine’s Day, I received a “Lobster for two” gift card from a woman I was dating with the assumption that we’d get to enjoy delicious lobster. Now that we’ve broken up, I’m at a loss for what to do with this gift certificate.
Not surprisingly, asking Miss Manners or handbooks on social etiquette are pretty useless on lobster courtesy. So I decided that these might be my options:
• Give the lobster certificate to someone else. That’s not a really good solution, because I’m basically a regifter, and would be forever known as “the regifter of lobsters.” I’m sure that at my funeral my Rabbi would be utterly confused about someone eulogizing about Nick, the lobster regifter.
• Eat both of the lobsters myself. I thought about this, but as a now bachelor, cooking up a lobster for myself is a lot of work. Not to mention – what do I do with the other lobster? Do I try to eat both? Do I put it in the fridge until the next day? It strikes me as a little Jeffrey Dahmer-esque to have live things in my fridge.
• Share it with someone else. Now, believe it or not and despite what the internet tells you about me, I do have a bit of a conscience. Not much, but some. And I’m afraid that conscience would get in the way of enjoying delicious lobster.Since I’m at a loss as to what to do with this gift certificate, I thought that the only honorable thing would be to return it to you in order to have you figure out what to do. Better yet, if you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them. My options basically are to look like a dick, feel like a dick, or look and feel like a sociopath – none of which seem like good options.
Yours in delicious lobster butter sauce,
Nick Hawkins
Lobster Enthusiast