I Earned My Mexican Card Today

As a precursor to this story, I have to say that it's a 100% better read if you have The Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert playing somewhere in the background.

As an after-note to that precursor, it's my personal belief that your whole life will be 100% better if you have The Spanish Flea by Herb Alpert playing in the background.

It all started when a careless Hispanic man left a small glass bottle of habenero hot sauce on a table. A busser picked it up and handed it to me.

"Que quiere este? Lo encontre en le mesa."

Since I had no idea what she said, but half guessed it was something along the lines of "here, take

this sauce," I shrugged and took it to the back. My co-worker Junior, who is about 90% deaf, was

standing at the table in what I consider the "break area" (because we don't have an actual break

room). I jokingly motioned for him to drink some. He laughed and said "No, you crazy" in his

soft-spoken Spanglish dialect.

"Whatever man. I'm totally going to find a use for this though." Later that night, as I got off work, I

went back into the kitchen. "Hey Nico, I wanna make a pizza with this."

Nico, one of the main chefs, examined the bottle. "Habanero XXX Hot Sauce. You want a pizza

with this? You're gonna die."

I shrugged. "Probably, but I'm hungry, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone."

Five minutes later, an ominous red miasma permeated the whole kitchen. The pizza moaned and

growled as it lurched out of the oven. The person who cut it suffered third degree burns all the

way up their arm, as well as in their nose, mouth, and eyes. As it was being transported, it

melted right through the metal pan, and had to be brought to me in via wheel-barrow. The whole

building was evacuated for their own safety, and we had to disengage the sprinkler system for

fear of it activating.

Okay, not really, but seriously, it was hot.

I set it down on my table just as my boss, a small Mexican man named Alex, was coming over. "I

bet you're gonna cry."

"I'm not going to cry Alex."

"Good, I don't want to see you cry." He pulled out his Iphone. "But when you do, I'm gonna take

a picture."

I was laughing to hard to eat my pizza. When I finally calmed myself, I took a bite. I can still feel

the raw spot on the top of my mouth from the burn. I kept my composure. All I could say was

"wow."

"Is it hot?"

"Yeah. But it's good. You should try some."

"What's on it?

"Onion, pineapple, pepperoni."

He brought a piece up to his nose and smelled it, then looked me dead in the eye and said "smells

like... crying."

"Yes, it's made from pure extract of crying. Just try some."

"Oh, this not hot at all." He said. I winced. "Nico, come try this. Is good."

Nico came over and put a piece on a plate. "Is it hot?"

"Yeah, it's really freaking hot."

"Mm. Okay. I'll try it." He ventured into the back of the store. About thirty seconds later he

came back out, looked at me, laughed, and shook his head.

"Was it hot?"

"I only took one bite. It's too hot. I couldn't even swallow it."

Junior came out of the back with a look of horror on his face. "You want some man?" He looked at

the pizza, then at Nico breathing heavily and fanning his face with his hand, shook his head, and

briskly walked away. I ate another piece. "Hey Alex, I didn't cry. Does that mean I'm a Mexican

now?"

"Yeah, you can be Mexican now. Here your Mexican card." He pretended to hand me an

invisible card.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I earned my Mexican card. Just so you have

some point of reference, the jalapeno (approx. 5000 SHU, or Scoville Heat Units) is about 1/20th

as hot as a habenero. The habenero (in between 100,000-350,000 SHU) is approximately

1/12th the heat of the worlds hottest known pepper, called the "Trinidad Scorpion Butch T"

pepper, which clocks in at 1,463,700 SHU. This pepper is so hot that you have to wear gloves to

hold it, and if it gets anywhere near your eye it will temporarily blind you. You have to wear a

body suit or a chemical mask just to cook it.

Or for another point of reference, this pepper is hotter than most law-enforcement grade pepper

sprays, which range from 500,000 to 2,000,000 SHU. If I were to extract the pure chemical

that causes the burning sensation from a pepper, called "capsaicin," it would be 16,000,000 SHU.

Ingesting pure capsaicin would cause you to convulse for a few seconds, and then drop dead.

I swear, I'll revolt all over this business.

Look, since the government obviously doesn't have anything better to do with its time than declare that pizza is a vegetable and enforce the same internet censorship used to such countries at Libya (you remember, that one that had all those protests and stuff about how they wanted their internet back) and China (you know, the Communist one), I honestly don't see why we keep them around at all.

Seriously. I hope they had just gotten out of a thirteen hour debate about how they're going to get us out of debt, and on the little coffee break were like, "man, pizza has a lot of veggies and stuff, let's make it a veggie too." Bam, done in five minutes, then back to the big problems. Don't waste America's time like this, Congress. It's not funny anymore. And leave our Internets alone. We're out of jobs, we're out of money, and if you take the internet away, it's the freaking last straw. Revolt, anyone?

Where's Guy Fawkes when you need him.

If you don't already know what's going on, please educate yourself on why America as we know it is about to change forever, if we don't do something. Do you want to end up like Libya?

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

To e-mail your representatives, please visit this site: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

"What PROTECT-IP will do is cripple new start-ups because it also lets companies sue any site they feel isn't doing their filtering well enough. These law-suits could easily bankrupt new search-engines and social media sites. And PROTECT-IP's wording is ambiguous enough that important social media sites could become targets. Lots of trail-blazing websites could look like piracy havens to the wrong judge. Tumblr, Soundcloud, an early Youtube, wherever people express themselves make art, express themselves, broadcast news, or organize protests..."

Memories, oh, such good memories...

I love my job. Sure, it has its downsides just like any other job (like standing up, moving around for 5+ hours), but it has its upsides too. The latter outweigh the former, hands down. For starters, I get paid, which is pretty spiffy. Also, within about an hour before or after a shift I get to go in and eat all the free tasty mac-n-cheese/Bavarian cream dessert pizza I want. The little uniform I have to wear with "CiCi's" plastered across the front is a little cheesy, but I get to wear jeans, a fact which I try to rub in my brothers face as often as possible.

I'm pretty new to my job, and all the cynics say I'll get tired of it, which I might, but for now, it's great. A while back, this adorable little black girl got sooooo dang excited over cinnamon rolls that she started dancing around in a circle. She reminded me of Boo off of Monsters Inc. I turned to the assistant manager and said "wow, I've never seen kids so excited about food." He looked me dead in the eye and said "I have. Every day since I started working here." How freaking cool is that? When I applied at the it's-kind-of-like-a-miniature-Incredible-Pizza buffet I didn't think about that at all. I work where I get to see a bunch of little kids have fun. I love kids. I have three nephews and two neices. They're pretty adorable, if I do say so myself. I know more than a few people that would say theirs are more cute, but you know, whatever...

Anyways, today there was a group of about fifteen 5-7ish year old looking girls who were apparently just finishing up a season of basketball. A large African American man, loud voice, awesome laugh, stood up and starting giving out little participation trophies and thanking all the kids and their parents for a great season.

I don't know if you know this about me, but when I was little I played soccer. I mean, I loved soccer. There is nothing I'd rather do than soccer now that I'm not playing it anymore. I played for about eight years, from when I was four till I was twelve. I played a season of basketball, and one season of baseball too, but neither of them could take the place of soccer.

After every season, the coach would take us all out to the Mazzio's on 31's and Garnett, where we'd play Mortal Kombat 2 on the old Atari game box and stuff our faces with pizza. Our coach, a tall (well, to me, a little 3' kid) gruff man, who I personally believe wore a hat just so he could throw it on the ground when he got angry, would stand at the end of the three or four connected tables with a box crammed with participation trophies. As he called out each of our names, he would tell us how proud of us he was for playing so great (we were the second best team in our league for about five years) and tell one of his favorite memories of us playing. I remember his smile as he passed out the trophies to each one of us. He was angry at times, like most coaches, but he was awesome, and I have a lot of respect for him now that I look back on it.

I only remember a few of the guys I played with, but I mostly remember my friend Mati. He was this crazy Indian guy, pretty tall for his age, skinny kid, and he had the funniest run ever. He'd stick his arms all the way down at his sides with his hands pointing straight out. He looked like a freak and a pansy, but nobody made fun of him because he was still faster than everyone else on the team.

Sometimes I pass by the fields we practiced at, which were across from a football stadium, next to a baseball field, and behind a middle school. They're somewhere around the Panera on 41st.

This was probably one of the greatest times of my life, and I pray that I never ever forget it. I was just wondering if maybe you guys and gals had any super fond memories like this you felt like sharing. Comment or do whatever you do. I'd love to hear what you've got to say.

Oh, and this song is the bomb-diggity. A little depressing, but still, it's the bomb-diggity.