Who Has the Conch?

Have you ever read The Lord of the Flies?  I have, a long time ago, and I vaguely remember that the kids had a rule that whoever held the conch shell was the one who could speak.  Among our group of friends back home this would come up from time to time when we were hanging out and getting a little boisterous and someone would have to talk and they would make sure everyone else knew that they figuratively held the conch.  We had one of those nights on Exodus after our nice dinner in Chacala.  Lady Carolina came over, and Carolina and I drank vodka tonics on top of the 2/3 bottle of wine we each had drank at dinner.  The problem was we all wanted to talk and no one was listening to anyone, so we tried calling, “I have the conch!”  But the figurative conch wasn’t working, and we didn’t have a real one, so we tried all the shells we had, including and abalone shell.  None of them worked.  Sometimes, you just need a real conch.