Mike’s Comedy: Jalapeño edition

Ahhh, the jalapeño story, this is a good one. My first jalapeno was a terrible and cool experience at the same time, I should’ve known from its lavish red-orange color that it was a bad idea. Except I didn’t and it went horrible. It was on a Summer break about 9-10 years ago and I was in Cape Cod with my family. First, I should probably say that we are Italian people, and people generally think that the folks of our ethnicity generally don’t have a problem with foods that are spicy, well you can throw that out the window when it comes to me. This was a slightly rainy day, it was in the 70s in terms of temperature, but it felt like it was in the 90s due to the high humidity rating (around 90%). Makes sense doesn’t it? Hot day for eating hot food, hahahahaha. Oh ok, I guess you don’t have to laugh.

     We were staying in Eastham which is a nice little town on the cape, we were at my Meme and Grandpa’s cape house. This thing was older than World War II. The living room where this happened was straight out of the sixties, from the dark oak walls to the black and gray brick fireplace. There was a large black leather chair that my grandpa had proclaimed as his. The carpet was this weird combination of greens and blues and grays. It was real ugly. Then the couch where I had my first jalapeño, it was this combination of teal and gray, there’s no other way to describe it. The floor also felt like you were stepping in mud and sand at the same time, mostly due to the sand particles. Since it was raining, we hadn’t gone to the beach so I was watching the Yankees game with my Grandpa. My Grandpa was eating a few jalapeños since he loves spicy food,

“Eh, that looks kinda good.” I thought to myself,

He was watching the game and I kept thinking about those jalapeñosthey looked really cool, they were this red color like blood and there were green ones like the fern outside the window.

“Hey Grandpa?” I asked him, in the high pitched voice I had that makes me so disappointed in myself.

“Yeah, Mike?” He replied.

“Can I try one of those things?” I asked, excitedly.

“You sure about that? These things ain’t exactly for a 5 year-old…” He told me.

“Pleeeeeaaassssee” I pleaded.

“Alright,” He said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He handed me one of them, it felt really light, but looked as girthy as a pear. I bit into it, and nothing happened, jalapenos aren’t one of those things that light your mouth on fire instantly, it happens slowly. It gets warm, then it gets hot, then hotter, then hotter, and before you know it, you feel like you gotta call the fire department because your mouth is burning away.

“Oh god, that’s very hot! I need water!” I screamed as I got up and started to run to the kitchen. My grandpa had started laughing because it was funny to him. I downed like 3 bottles of water, and it wasn’t working.

“Why are you drinking so much water?” My Meme asked, confused.

“I had a jalapeño, and I didn’t know it was so hot!” I said, water pouring out of my mouth onto the floor. My Grandma started laughing and told me to drink milk, she said that’ll make it better, so I ran to the fridge, got some milk out, and started chugging it.

“Why did I do that? Why did I do that?” I kept saying to myself, my face was redder than a kit kat wrapper, and my shirt was covered in milk and water. My parents then got to the house after going for a walk, and asked why my face was so red,

“He tried a jalapeño,” My Grandpa told them, “Clearly, he couldn’t handle it.”

As he bit into another one, I kept thinking, how? How could he eat those things without water or milk? I was even more shocked when my Dad went over and ate one no problem. I just kept asking,

“How? HOW? How do you eat one of those without needing milk or water?”

“I’ve been eating these things for a while.” My Dad told me.

“Let’s not forget how your first jalapeño went.” My Grandpa said, starting to laugh.

“How did that one go?” I asked, really wanting to know, cause someone else knew the suffering I had just gone through.

“It went basically the same as you, but he was younger and had tears in his eyes.” My Grandpa got out before laughing. My Dad was laughing too, and so was my Meme.

“That was horrible, why would anyone ever, EVER, want to eat any of those?” I asked, real confused at the matter.

“Just eat more and they get better and aren’t as spicy.” My Grandpa assured me.

“I’m NOT gonna do that right now.” I said, rather seriously.

What made me more mad at the jalapeños is that while I was trying to get rid of the heat that had taken over the top of my mouth, The Yankees had got a 3 run lead.

There was quite a while where I didn’t want to eat jalapenos at all, but I finally decided,

“Hey, why not? I know what to expect now.” Yeah that didn’t make the second time any better, but that’s another story. Yeah, that’s my jalapeño story, and funny enough I recently had another one, can you guess how that one went? It went okay, in case you’re wondering. I CAN eat them, but I do need water, or milk. It’s funny, I’m italian and can’t handle spicy things. There’s some irony there. I mean, an Italian who can’t handle spicy food? I’m a disgrace to this ethnicity.

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