Finger lickin' good

I remember the slogan clearly from my childhood, with many a family fishing trip where KFC played a central role in the eating pre-catch. It took on new meaning, though, when I was at my local KFC one day. [Side note: The popularity of fried chicken here took me entirely by surprise and there are a fair number of KFCs in the city -- not to mention that my third graders cite KFC as *the* place to have a birthday party, other than McDonald's.] Anyways, so I was sitting at KFC when I noticed a girl and her mother donning big plastic disposable gloves to eat their chicken. At first, I wondered at the OCD-ness of a family that would bring disposable gloves with them to KFC, but then I looked around and saw that a few other customers had them as well! Now, really... can't you just wash your hands? They already give us wet wipes!

I was even more dismayed the next time the plastic gloves made an appearance -- at a Chinese seafood restaurant where we were eating hairy crab (so named for their hairy claws, but also known as Chinese mitten crab or literally from Chinese, "big binding crab"). So, where lobster sometimes comes with bibs, crab in Hong Kong sometimes comes with a side order of plastic gloves. How appetizing.