August 22nd, 2008
Hot pepper eye
Like his father and grandfather before him, Dave plants a garden every summer. It’s not the nicest looking garden – there’s no rhyme or reason to it, everything grows all over the place and he uses wood trim that he finds on clearance at the hardware store as stakes, but no matter; this year’s crop included broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, corn and beans. BOOYA!
We have so many tomatoes that, when we have people over, we do it up door-prize style and give out bags of them as they leave. We have almost as many peppers – sweet, banana and hot – and those babies grill up real nice on the barbie. The last two times Dave’s mom has come over she’s called to tell us the peppers she picked turned out to be hot rather than sweet; last weekend she cut one up for a salad only to have her eyes start watering after the second bite.
The other night for dinner we had grilled chicken breasts and peppers on the barbeque, and Dave threw a few of his own peppers on, too. Before he did, though, he snapped off the top and scooped the insides out with his finger.
I was in the kitchen slicing peaches when I heard him call from the patio, “Hey babe, if I stuck my finger in a hot pepper and then rubbed my eye, would it sting?”
Before I had a chance to say YES, YOU MORON, he shot through the screen door and in to the kitchen, one hand clasped over his right eye.
“OH MY GOD,” he shouted. “MY EYE IS BURNING!” He ran to the sink. “Can you Google ‘hot pepper in eye’ and see what comes up?” he shouted over the running water.
“Babe, let me see,” I said. He swung around, dripping water all over the floor, and opened his eye. It had puffed up like crazy, and lemmie tell ya, that fucker was red.
“Jesus, Dave, you could shoot fireballs out of that thing,” I exclaimed. “Maybe you should go to the hospital and have it flushed for real.”
“Nah,” he said, reaching across the counter for a tea towel. “I rinsed it out good.”
His eye stayed red for a while longer and it was still puffy by the time we went to bed. We had a good laugh about his ‘hot pepper eye,’ although Dave made sure I knew just how much it had stung and how, for a few seconds there, he thought he might go blind. Wuss.
But my husband sticking his finger inside a hot pepper and then rubbing his eye doesn’t come remotely close to the time he rubbed Tiger Balm all over my aching back only to give his balls a good scratchin’ immediately afterward. That particular conversation went something like this:
“’Kay babe, is that good? I used a lot, can you tell?”
“Mmmm, yeah. My back is burning. Thanks.”
“No problem, babe. Glad I could help.”
Pause.
“Oh. Shit. I just scratched my balls.”
“Mmmm?”
“My balls, babe. MY BALLS. They're burning. OH GOD, my balls. My fucking BALLS ARE ON FIRE!”
*end scene
