Hermit Crab

During my childhood, I mostly spent my school holidays with my cousins at my aunt's house in Chonburi. We often went to the sea. All of us enjoyed swimming, playing sand and some activities on the beach with our uncle in law.


There was a lot of things on the beach for us to play as our toys. We made castles from sand, drew pictures or wrote mssages on the beach, made sand balls and set up who-can-throw-the-ball-further competition, catch-little-crab competition or shell contest. Our toys were sand, Beach morning glory, shells, and little crabs.


There was another one of my cousin's toy which he loved. It's hermit crab.

As a naughty boy, my cousin, Earth, catched hermit crabs while they were slowly walking on the beach.


Why it must have been while they're walking? Because sometimes when the crabs hide themselves in the shells, it would be hard for us to find out if there's the crabs inside or they still are alive, right? My cousin wanted to make sure that his toy were still alive. That's the reason.


Beside a naughty boy, Earth was cruel also. He catched those crabs. He selected only big ones and put them on a table. The crabs would be flipped over so that they couldn't walk away, left on the table and sun-cured.


Earth would wait until the crabs came out of their shells. Then the tragedy began.... He pulled the crabs out and provided them sun-cure again... Those pitiful little crabs died not longer after they had no shells.


Nonetheless, there were some lucky hermit crabs survived.


As being stubborn, Earth didn't listen to anyone. I then looked at him slowly killed those crabs quietly. When he left his killing table to played with something else, sometimes I saw some hermit crabs showed themselves out of their shell habitats and got back in suddenly my cousin came back. They hid themselves in there and didn't even appear again while some others crabs which come out to say hi when Earth was around were forced to leave their homes.


When some crabs didn't appear, Earth thought that they already died inside the shells. So he would throw those hermit crabs on the beach and shift his attention to something else.


Guess what?


Those crabs survived and enjoyed their lives ater the killing table.

Hermit Crab...




Their shells are their shelters. When they feel safe, then they would come out.


Once they come out from the shells, they take risk to get hurt....


When they hurt, they would get back into the shell and hide themselves there till they would feel safe again.


But if they don't realize that they would be in danger, carelessly show themselves up, they may be hurt or even die.....







Mankind is just like hermit crab, I think.


Once I feel safe or comfortable, I would speak what's on my mind.


If I feel comfortable enough, you can pull me out and I will be willing to take risk and sunbathe out of my shell.


But if what I get is rejection, negligence or judgement, I would hide my feeling under smiley mask and would not talk about it ever again.

Well.....


and if I know in advance that I would get hurt once I emerge my head, you can blame me for my hiding myself in the shell.


According to my cousin's hermit crabs, somehow I should be underneath my shell so I would survive?






So... in that case...


Let me feel safe, give me awhile...


And please don't pull me out, I'm not ready to die....