Meghan was carefully cleaning up the vector of a drawing she had done. It was Sunday afternoon and she was in her happy place, listening to a book and doing the fussy bits of art making when Justin came into the room.
She turned to look at him, and he held out a plate. It was one of the nice white and cream, textured rim, small plates, and on that plate was a single chip.
“Oh. Ok.” Meghan said, and then stood up. “But we need to get our supplies ready.”
They marched back to the kitchen and gathered glasses of chocolate milk, some flan (a cream based treat) and more chips, but different than the one.
Then, without any further talk, Justin broke off a third of the Paqui One Chip Challenge chip and started eating. Meghan watched for a moment and quirked an eyebrow at him.
“It tastes awful, and it is unpleasant.” Justin said calmly, around the mouthful of chip he was chewing. Meghan resisted the urge to roll her eyes at him, Justin had long since proven that he was insensitive to Capsaicin. She didn’t trust his judgement when it came to heat. She’d tried the Trinidad Scorpion Pepper raw a few weeks back at her office and it had sent her rushing to the employee break room to gargle mini-moos, and she expected that he would have found that heat acceptable.
Because of that, she was fairly certain she knew what she was getting into when she broke off 1/4th of the chip and stuck it in her mouth. “Oh, yeah, that does taste bad.” She agreed as she started to chew, and before the utter pain over-took her. Then she started chewing fast as Justin started coughing and then went over to the sink to wash his hands.
Her gums and tongue burned, nerves screaming at her for her hubris like teeny-tiny, on-fire needles stabbing into her gums, her lips and her tongue. She ripped open the flan and tried to chew it but even opening her mouth to the air renewed the pain and if she breathed out through that passage at all searing fire out of her mouth to singe the air.
She should have opened her milk before starting this, but she didn’t and now she had to wait while Justin carefully and thoroughly cleaned his hands before she could get her hands cleaned so as to not spread any capsaicin to the rim of the milk jug accidentally. He was taking forever and was still coughing, clearing his throat as if he had something to say over and over again, but never saying anything. By now, the burning spread into her throat and breathing was becoming an exercise in pain.
Screw it. She ripped open the fridge and drank from the already open gallon of milk, and the milk provided immediate relief–relief that went away the second she swallowed. A couple minutes more and Justin finally stepped away from the sink to open his milk and as Meghan scrubbed her hands he said, “The burning just keeps coming back!”
Meghan noded and croaked out an agreement, trying to not breathe on her sensitive membranes while talking. It was another quite, panicked minute of sipping milk before Justin went into the bathroom and gargled, giving Meghan the idea to brush her damned teeth.
It was only after a full cleaning that the pain died down and pretty much went away.
Lessons learned: 1. Flan does not work as a countermeasure for capsaicin. 2. Milk is amazing. 3. Electric toothbrushes really do SO much better a job than regular tooth brushes.
MCM Creative 