A simple story

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a memorable sight to be sure. It took guts. I didn’t think she had it in her emotionally. I was wrong. Am I a proud parent?

This story properly starts at work. I’m a corporate borg. I’m titled as “Software Engineer” for a large national bank in there sub-accounting group of the mutual fund back office service area. Very dry work. Very slow in terms of pace. I’m writing this at work because I have the time. Our work area is a group of half walled cubicles. A very open area. This leads to a great deal of idle conversations to pass the time.

One can get an impression or see a persona of people. They are not real or complete. But unavoidable. Typically, the talk is of oddities in the news or personal lives. There have been online stories of exploding whales, beer guzzling bears that generates talk in the pit. It is a constant drone for the most part.

There is this one red-headed fellow with yellow lensed glasses and a moustache and short hair. Pleasant enough to converse with during the day. He lives alone in a rural suburb. He describes it as true farmland. He found an ad in a local paper for a job. “Corn pollinator”. Did I mention that he is young widower. In fact most of the guys are single or available. Being that we are a group of men, in a period of history when the Republicans and George Bush Junior is in office and there are shows like the “Man Show” and “Spike TV”, humor tends to devolve into things nasty or sexual or some combination. So, the jokes revolve around this ad take a sexual tilt.

This guy is into hot sauce and spice like I’ve never seen. He keeps Tabasco sauce in his desk in the office for most of his meals. Boasts of how hot is hot are not unusual. Occasionally, he brings in different batches of chili for testing. Apparently there is a cadre in the company that share this taste for soft-tissue oral pain. Anyway, he goes out of his way to get the “good stuff”.

So when he brings in vegetable there is always some good nature humor about various combinations vegetable, sex and what really happens “down on the farm”. One day he brings in some tomatoes. One tomato in particular stood out. It was red, round and had a texture not unlike a tomato. It allegedly came from a plant that had other tomatoes. This one had 2 protrusions. Pointed protrusions from the top, that were 180 degrees from each other. Yes, it looks like a devil.

We all were amazed, until a couple of days later, he brought in some peppers. Small ones. Red Small ones. Red Small ones of a Chinese name that he couldn’t pronounce. It appeared that the shape of the tomato protrusions paralleled the peppers exactly. So we speculated that perhaps the somehow there was some kind of cross pollination going on in the tomato.

So I took a bag of the pepper as an experiment. I wanted to see something. If the tomato could pick up something from the nearby peppers, perhaps the bite the peppers might be lessened. My brother-in-law is into the hot stuff also, so I thought if they were too much for me, I’d give them to him.

On the way home I got an evil thought. A cruel one to be sure. One that I don’t think I would have really followed through on. One that I didn’t think anyone take the bait. Being a bit mischievous, I called home and my 13 year old picked up the phone. Her mother was at the movies with some friends, and so she was left to make dinner for herself. Without telling her exactly what it was, I tried to convince to wait on the Mac-n-cheese because I wanted her to have some vegetables.

No luck. She didn’t want to wait. When I got home with the baggy of peppers, I found a half empty pot of mac-n-cheese on the stove. I put the peppers on the island to check the mail on the kitchen table.. In walks my girl. And as I’m looking through the mail, and half thinking of ways to raise the subject. She spots the bag of peppers. As I turn and look, she is picking one out of the bag and smelling it. She takes a bite.

I half expected her to transform into a cartoon character, complete with smoke coming out of the ears. Her eyes dialated and her face turned red. She couldn’t get it out of her mouth fast enough. We laughed. If she were a baby or toddler, I would comfort her, but at thirteen when she knows enough not put things in her mouth, I laugh with her while looking for the milk, or something cold to help put out the flames. This went on for about 10 minutes or so.

I then tried the stunt on the older daughter. She is leaving for college this week. So I thought she might see it as a challenge. I and the little one, tried for about another ten minutes to convince her, but to no avail. So I went back downstairs to finish the other half of the mac-n-cheese. It looked good. The little one followed.

I still don’t completely understand, but the little one, again on her own, proceeded to take a second pepper, cut it open and eat one of the seeds alone.

Now go back to the first line of the story.