In Times Of Heat: Hot Peppers

Dangers Of Double-Daring Each Other

I learned all I wanted to about “heat” at the ripe old age of nine. I wasn’t the only one. My little brother and twin calves were in the same class time lesson. The whole debacle began in a double-dare-you showdown in our tree house. It ended up stuck to a freezer with a background of a whole lot of bellowing bawling frantic tails up stampeding, and the dreaded spanking switch for the poor decisions.

It all began in the garden, where our Grama Daisy grew multiple types of peppers. That year in Huntington Beach, California, she also had bought two black and white Holstein dairy calves that Dennis and I were in charge of helping to raise.

Blackie and Whitey were spoiled on their namesake Oreo cookies and other such treats. They would eat whatever we kids had in our hands. They followed us everywhere, including out to the pepper patch. We were locked into the dynamics of that ages-old familiar sibling rivalry, brother and sister taunting mode of “I dare you” that summer.

I confess I was likely the instigator up in our tree house that day. I was always trying to get the best of Dennis, who at seven was gullible and easy to tease, torment, and snooker out of his twenty-five cent weekly allowance.

Somehow we decided to go to the pepper patch and take turns picking out a “hot pepper” for the “other” to eat. We forgot the calves were following us in that ill fated trek. The planned finale for “winner declared” was the supposed to be the decided in the tree house. The prize was having to do the other’s chores for a week.

Needless to say the heat eating plot thickened.

Where A Hot Summer Day Met Real Heat

“You first!

“No girls first. That’s the rule, Mama said.”

“No, we both put one in our mouths and chew it at the same time,” faking my older, but wiser false concern for being fair.

“OK . . . But the one who spits them out first is the loser.”

“Sure . . . agreed!” Pinkie swearing. I knew I could outlast get the best of him every time.

To set the record straight, I swear to this day, I was winning. After all, I was older, wiser, and knew the difference between a sweet pepper and a hot pepper. I was also thinking Den would give up quickly, not realizing my last pick was going to be a Habanero pepper.

Back up in the tree house with our newly picked buckets of peppers we faced each other. The calves first had started out following us to that field. Neither of us noticed the calves didn’t follow us back.

Soon, there were tears in both of our eyes, and our tongues were smarting with the heat and fire of peppers. Never-the-less, both of us were determined not to spit the contents out of our mouths or swallow first.

With each traded pepper, it was beginning to dawn on me I hadn’t counted on the annoying fact that my brother just grabbed peppers that I knew weren’t mild. By the third pepper trade, our mouths were stubbornly growing fuller. It was also about the same time when we heard the calves loudly bawling and running from Gram’s pepper field.

Peering over our tree perch, both of us secretly wanting to spit out some peppers without the other knowing, and we realized the calves had also sampled the wrong kind of peppers. We didn’t see where they ended up. Catching sight of them caterwauling and running fast with their normally flaccid tails sticking up in the air waving “Something’s really wrong” — had Den and I scurrying down out of that tree.

Make no mistake. We weren’t coming to Blackie and Whitey’s rescue. We were running into the garage as fast as our little legs could carry us. Both of us had mistakenly swallowed peppers in our haste to get out of our tree fort. Neither of us were going admit that. We only agreed on the destination.

It was in the garage where Grama found us with our tongues stuck on the built up ice in the now open old 1950’s chest freezer. We were trying to get rid of our respective mouths of fire. Our tongues were stuck to the ice and we were in need of being unstuck.

Despite our distress, Grama Daisy rightfully (for the times and parenting mindset back then) afterwards gave us both a couple of licks with her whippin’ switch for letting the calves out in a pepper field. She however, was kind enough though to pour warm water over our tongues first to free us.

We spent the rest of the day confined in our rooms drinking milk, eating Graham crackers, and arguing of course, about who swallowed first! We also spent the next week doing extra chores for letting those calves out in that field.

Today’s kids keep mostly digital diaries, but in 1958, I had thanks to Grama Daisy — a baby blue, Dear Diary, that locked. It had a teen girl in petal pushers and a man’s shirt. I loved it mostly because I often had seen my teen mom wear the exact same outfit. In it, my earliest poems sometimes were found in pencil with a lot of erasures.

I don’t have that plastic old diary anymore. However, here’s what I remember scrawled in heavily underlined bold words: “Don’t Double Dare About Peppers!” Don’t Stick Your Tongue On Ice In The Freezer.”

Had I written a poem back then, it might have gone something along the lines of:

Double Dare Hot Pepper Lessons

Two Orange County kids, one double-dare, and field of hot peppers Who could put the most in their mouth not swallow, they’d be the better. They doubled heat down, their tongues soon on heat fire, They couldn’t swallow, they couldn’t spit them out, in hot dire.

Running to the freezer, stuck their tongues on ice, Thinking it would help, but it only made things worse. Now stuck, they couldn’t holler, get away, or speak, Their twin Holsteins also came running, all starting to freak.

The calves too tried the peppers, wasn’t the Oreos they started to munch, The kids and the calves bawling, they were running for cooler icey hills, You’d think a lesson learned by all, never double-dared each other again, Not exactly, though we never heat challenged again with peppers, a food lesson we never forgot.

“I didn’t start out being a fan of spicy foods, or hot peppers. Heat wasn’t my thing. But as a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother — I marvel at the fact that the heat of hot sauce is probably rooted in our DNA. My oldest granddaughter and great-granddaughter actually carry their own “favorite” brand of “Gator Hammock Gator Sauce” wherever they go.

My Cajun Mama and I both grow multiple types of peppers for use in the many different Type 2 diabetic meals we eat. Our lives have been filled with “heat” lots of trying new pepper varieties. The variety of spices, peppers, and hot sauces adds to keeping life spicy. A little heat in your food goes a long way is our motto.” Jerilee Wei © 2023

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