Crabs for Sale!

By Rolo B. Cena

Random

Dumaguete Star Informer

24 September 2016

My last Sunday’s trip to the other side of the island was an unplanned way to unravel my overworked biological system drained by week’s activities we staged.  Taking a bus via San Carlos was unpremeditated for it was a wrong choice.  I could have taken the other way that’s supposed to cut across the mountains of Mabinay and reached Bacolod in about five hours.  But the trip that I took, while it traversed the easy northern plains of Negros Oriental to meet the northern sphere of Occidental brought me to my destination in about ten hours.  It was a taxing long trip though but I was able to unwind and relax until I reached the “City of Smiles.”

In the first stop over, I saw a native basket half-filled with live, local crabs.  As I saw the vendor from the window of the passenger’s bus, I could read from her lips chanting her apparently favorite line to sell her crabs, I was sure.  I love to scoff crabmeats and always love to watch them crawl.   However, I hate being with crabs:  I hate seeing them pull down someone who is almost halfway to the rim of the bin; I hate to entertain the thought of one biting the other. 

The crab behavior is by far the most peculiar.  While most of them in the animal kingdom display almost the same behavior, crabs easily catch everyone’s attention.  Irrational that they are, their game is undeniably different, something other creatures don’t do.  They are animals, right; they are governed by their “id”.

I can’t help but associate them with human behavior.  Truth be told, there are organizations that often use animal psychology during the screening process, especially if the applicants do not show behaviors that organizations want to see from them.  

And crabs are everywhere:  They exist in workplaces in the guise of emphatic friends, listening superiors or sympathetic co-workers; they blossom in schools or academic institutions in the guise of highly articulate and superior-feeling principals, deans, teachers, instructors and professors; they thrive in People’s Halls in the guise of modern-day Robin Hood helping or saving the deprived, underprivileged and the marginalized members of the society – magnifico!

Back to the crabs in the native basket, that one big crab suddenly filled my mind.  Without much effort of retrieving the file from my memory disk, I remember an officemate who, during my day one in office, expressed how he had wanted to take the position I was holding.  He alleged that he applied for the position more than once but was never given any formal feedback.  The management though, through an emissary, informed him that he was not qualified.  He told me a lot of things about the people, about the management and about the organization.  He gave nothing but negative things.  Until today, he still says something ill about the people, about the management and about the organization.   Worse, he keeps on saying ill things, which to my own analysis are unfounded and biased, about co-workers moving up.

In schools, these species bloom and blossom each day.  They behave like they are accommodating all complaints, helping co-workers, entertaining students.  But lo and behold, they talk about you, about their co-workers, about their students at the back.

Most of the time, crabbing works to a crab’s disadvantage.  Yes, I agree that it may work for a time.  Take a case of the feisty lady senator who had been very critical about the President.  She investigated the extrajudicial killings purportedly initiated by the President during his reign as Mayor until today to the extent of producing a witness that turned out to be a dose of her own prescription.  And while she talks against the extrajudicial killings of the President, she never said anything about the beheading of James and Jison by the Abu Sayyaf weeks ago as far as human rights violation is the object.  Worse, she condemns the President for killing those involved in drug trafficking and yet she turned out to be a protector allegedly receiving payola from drug lords of the national penitentiary.

This time, crabbing cost her chairmanship of the committee on justice and human rights.  It may even cost her senatorial post.  Way before the national elections last May 9, 2016, it was alleged there was a government official who silently manipulated and caused the sad fate of another official from the same group where he was.  That crabbing act cost his presidential bid.  I have known several in workplaces who lost their jobs due to crabbing and I am seeing another batch, this time.

Crabs produced by nature are high-end staple in local tables.  Crabs produced by human behavior are dangerous not just in local tables but elsewhere; they forget about values and social ethics.  They forget about respect to themselves. 

Crabs produced by nature, whenever up for sale, are truly highly marketable and salable.  Crabs produced by human behavior are purely landmines that when detonated produce a very obscure hullabaloos unpleasant to human ears.  They are bizarre work of human hands called trash.   

Crabs produced by nature are authentic; crabs produced by human behavior are paranoid.  And paranoia kills!

Will you buy one like her?