Guest Columnist: A Gulf Shrimp

Look, the life of a shrimp isn't all fun and games and singing Under the Sea. We scoot around eating gunk all day. We also have the good fortune of being the most delicious creature in the sea. Great. Everybody wants a piece of us. I'll probably be taking a one way cruise through the GI tract of some random fish next week or something. A few of us are choosen by our deity, the Great Net, plucked out of the sea to walk with Him in the paradise known to us as Grille or Hor Derve. Most of us just end up floating around till we go belly up.

I'm getting to the point! Do you have any idea how hard it is to write when you don't have a brain, just a distributed nervous system through your exoskeleton?

One of the few joys we have in our lives is that of parenting. Man, my antennae twitch with pride every time I gaze upon my little ones emerging from their gelatinous egg sac. I carefully mark every milestone. Little Scampi just rolled over for the first time, Popcorn just caught his first zooplankton, and Prawnetta has started scuttling around on the ocean floor! My kids rock!

Here's my advice. Don't be so paranoid about your kids. Don't treat them like helpless krill. You can't always fight their battles, and it's ok if you lose a few to a passing stingray or flamingo. You have 52,000 other ones left who look up to you. They need to learn to stand on their own 8 legs and scuttle.

Don't spoil them. You don't need to put another Barbie on your shrimp. They need to work hard for what they get because life isn't always fair. They need to work hard and learn how to put plankton on the table.

Finally, be there for them. Your work will always be waiting there for you. Do you really want to miss the precious moments in their lives? With a 1 year life span, they really do grow up fast.

What? No, I don't want to lay down in that lime juice. What are you doing with with that butter and garlic clove? Don't look at me like that.

The End.