Open Letter: To Shrimp

Dear Shrimp,

To start off, I would like to say that I am sorry and disgusted that I used to eat you guys. What was I thinking? I mean, really, you are freaks. Besides the way you smell (like fish), just the way you look is revolting. I am telling you that if one of you got on me and started crawling around, I would scream like there was no tomorrow. I am telling you this because it is the truth. I love the truth, and I hate you.

Are you clear or orange? When I see you on the Discovery Channel and/or Animal Planet, you seem to be clear, but in the restaurant (on a dinner plate) you are orange. What’s up with that? I do not understand this color-change thing.

I cannot stand your grodie bug eyes. I cannot stand your crawling crawler legs. And I do not take any truck with your feelers/antennas (whatever you call them). You are a spider/bug and have no business living underwater like how you do. But, if you lived on land I would hate you even more. So stay in your stupid ocean.

I call you (shrimp) and your cousins (lobster, crab) Spiders of the Sea. That is what you are. Freakin' water spiders. I mean, look at yourself, you have an exoskeleton. What the shit? Sometimes I feel like I am the only person who notices these things about you. But that does not matter anymore. I have washed my hands of you (sometimes literally) for some time now.
I do not know what your insides are made of. I do not know what you eat. I do not know why you have a Jell-o like consistency. I remember when I used to eat you--too slippery and slimy in my mouth. Gross. It is like; get a new consistency already. You needed breading just for a crunch. Loser.

Anyway, I was thinking about you last night. I was thinking about how sick I think you are. Not 'sick' in a good way, I mean it in a bad way, like 'gross' or 'barfey'. I suppose that you do not know that I live in Chicago now? Well, I do. And this leads me to think about the Sears Tower sometimes. I hear that it is a really big building. I thought last night, 'I wonder if you could fit all of the shrimp in all of the oceans into the Sears Tower?' I do not think that you could. Plus who would want to? You would all have to be dead and would be stinking to high Hell. Chicago does not need a bunch of shrimps stinking up the city. I guess that someone could put the Sears Tower on the bottom of the ocean. But that is not the point.

I do understand that you are a vital part of the food chain. I am not debating that. But, you just stay in the ocean and do your things there. I will stay here on land, away from you, and do my things and not eat you. Sometimes I am really glad that I was not born a mermaid.

I refuse to catch you later,

Emily Illinois