Last night I was dicing a habanero pepper (grown from I little plant I have on the kitchen windowsill) to put in a burrito I was making. I put a little piece in my mouth. After the standard five-second delay ("This is no hotter than a bell pepper!") the burning ramped up alarmingly. Watery eyes, runny nose. I said "Woah! That's hot" My 13-year-daughter told me I was exaggerating. "No," I said, "it's really hot." She didn't believe me.
What would you have done? I gave her a rice-grain-sized piece on a paper napkin and told her to touch the tip of her tongue to it. She now believes me about the hotness of habanero peppers. (I ate the entire pepper in my burrito, by the way. What a terrific experience.)
After tweeting the incident, Matt Brodeur replied "Dilbert creator Scott Adams learned the same lesson." And, as you might guess, it's a good story:
A few minutes passed, and I felt a tingle in my left hand – the one that directly handled the peppers. The tingle turned into a warm sensation, and the warmth turned into…well, this will take some explaining.
Imagine turning a broom upside down, so the pointy bristles are facing up. You take your hand, palm facing down, and bounce it on the pointy bristles. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that feels on your hand? Okay, good.
Now imagine that a giant troll sees you playing with the broom. He snatches it out of your hand, chews the handle into a point and shoves it so far up your ass that you can taste it. Then he uses you like a huge flyswatter to kill a nest of porcupines that are living in his salt mine. My hand hurt like that.
