There are two interesting epilogues, one about crabs and one about frogs. Remember them. I have seen one and so I know it’s true. We did some craving when I was a kid in the back waters of the Jersey shore. A crab pot would be thrown into the waters below a bridge and let the sides of the pot fall down by into the sand and let the crabs come to the bait. Some crab pots had an open top so you could see the crabs searching for a way out of the pot. I’m not very knowledgable about what exactly crabs are thinking but I can report what I see. And the crab would do its best to keep moving around the pot and find some place where it could escape and hopefully get on with its comings and goings. The only way in those pots was up. Then a funny thing would happen if there were other crabs in the pot. They might latch on to the top crab about to make his escape and hold him back or even pull him back in. Again, I don’t know if they knew what they were doing or thinking “Hey Buddy, if I can’t get out, you can’t get out” kind of thing, I kind of doubt it actually, but I would fault you too much for thinking that, or if they were just acting instinctively for their survival.
But this idea is often used as a warning that there will be others that don’t want you to get ahead, so they pull you back into their area and keep you from advancing.
The other idea is the boiling frog notion which I have not seen and cannot really report on. I rather doubt that frogs would stay in the pot if they were getting too hot. But hey, it makes a good point just the same. Some people will stay in a bad place even though all or most of the signs tell them that they should get out.
Now put these two ideas together and what do you come up with? A bit of a mess I would say.
Not to be too cryptic about it, but I think we are in similar situations today. It’s not that people don’t want you to get ahead, they probably don’t even think about you that much. But society as a whole is not putting it’s effort into others getting ahead and is content with hanging out in the crab pot as long as you are in there and they see no need to say “Boy, it sure is getting hot in here.”
As long as they have someone in there while the temperature is rising, then they feel like it must be safe, a temporary glitch in the system, we’ll get over it.
They have no clue that they are about to be Boiled Frog and Crab legs, someone’s dinner.
As my mom used to say, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.” I never have tried a pipe by the way.
Just saying, there is a lot of crabbing and frogging going on these days.