The 4 most harrowing words in the English Language

"Let the boy live"

Seems innocuous right, no harm there at all. Let the boy live, I mean what harm can come in letting a youngling out in this world full of adventure go out and enjoy himself nothing you say right. Oooohoo you would be so wrong, or maybe life was trying to teach me early on that me and drama were always going to be close friends. As a G+ friend of mine always likes to mention, here comes the back story.

Many years ago on one of our normal trips to some place not New Jersey(I believe I was 11 and my little sister was 6, my brothers weren't born yet), I believe we were heading to Kings Dominion in VA it was a weekend thing KD, Bush Gardens and possibly a Wet n' Wild or something, my parents were
driving us to our hotel/motel destination and as it was getting late decided that they wanted to stop off for food before we stopped to rest. We found some restaurant on the side of the highway looked cool enough and decided to stop in. You had my Father(I'm a Jr. so obviously he's Sr.), My mom(the lady, or Ancient Lady depending on how close she is to a throwing implement), Me(Prime), and my sister(who is resting in the hospital right now and I hope gets better) being shown to a seat by a smiling hostess of middling years, maybe late 20's early 30's long time ago so bear with me. Now as is customary when we go out to eat Dad usually recommends we get one thing, burgers and fries(we being the kids), his mantra being that it is pretty hard to screw up burgers and fries. Which is very true even if you aren't the worlds greatest cook you can throw a burger in a pan, flip it a few times, and as long as you don't let it get crunchy black or leave it too pink you probably have a decent burger. As for fries toss them in the fryer or else bake them and it's all good Golden Brown and Delicious and take them out and enjoy.

As the waitress comes over to take our orders she starts talking to us about stuff on the menu and there was this weird thing I saw called FUH JIGH TAHS(yes I know now that it is Fuh HEE Tahs, but she said it the other way too dammit), so I decided to ask her what fajitas were because they looked good. This of course drew a scowl from senior, here I go always gotta try something different. The waitress explained "they are really good, cut up steak, peppers, onions and you get a few tortillas to roll them up with," now at the time I did not like hot food so I heard peppers and immediately asked this SIMPLE question, "they have peppers in them ARE THEY HOT?" Now that is a pretty simple question right, MOST would think this would only require a YES or a NO, but not her, oh no THIS TROLLOP(I'm being mean, but I think at the time at least my thoughts on her were fair for an 11 year old) decides to give me this long drawn out explanation, "no they aren't really hot at all, it just depends on whether or not the horse radish is in season." Now at this point in time the onus is on little old me, I am seriously thinking about ordering this interesting new treat, I mean how often would I get a chance to try them I had never heard of them before(yes this was before Fajitas were like a menu staple in every kitschy after work food chain, yes I am that old okay let it freaking go) and something in my rabbit tailed mind(yes my brain is getting some blame too) was like "hmm they sound good you should try them, out of season horse radish so they aren't hot go ahead," and being the responsible adults that they were my parents were of course trying to help me with the choice. Dad said, "son you don't know what this is, you don't know if you will like it just get a cheese burger everything will be okay" (which of course did not appeal to me AT ALL, BRILLIANT!) and my loving mother, the woman who gave birth to me early that far off Christmas Morning(yup laying that on thick I know) came to the defense of my curious(and extremely foolish mind).

"Sweetie let him try it, it might be good I mean we are on vacation. Come on LET THE BOY LIVE," yes ladies and gentleman my dear sweet mother is the one who did what was about to happen next to me. She let me know it was okay to try new things, and so being the wise old age of 11(I think) I decided that yes I would like to try the FAJITAS. So Baby sis(at the time) listens to Dad (with her little suck up smile <.<) and gets a burger and french fries, I think dad gets like a steak and salad and mom gets the chicken. So she takes our orders a few minutes go by and food starts coming back moms chicken, the burger and dad's steak, in retrospect I realize that it was probably just a prop for the lodge we were eating at, unfortunately said prop had some extremely bad timing. I did not of course receive my food with every one else, and as I ask my parents how much longer they think my food would be I start looking around and I don't know which of us mentioned it first(me or my sister) but the eyes of the animal heads that were posted around the lodge, which really didn't seem that important at first glance I mean I had seen movies with animal heads posted on walls before whoop dee, had now all started to glow bright red as the sun began to go down below the horizon. So okay that was creepy, and then to make matters worse this loud sizzling sounds starts coming from the kitchen area. Of course I remark I hope that isn't my food(damn you irony) cause that sounds scary; let's see here ominous glowing red eyes, check; darkening world outside; check, loud scary noise coming from the kitchen, check; so why in the hell did I even open my mouth? Because I was a kid and didn't know any better.

So the waitress walks up to the table with this skillet in a like wooden plank to hold it and sets it down in front of me and then goes and gets my tortillas and other fixings(sour cream, guacamole, cheese, tomatoes) and leaves me to the task at hand. Sooo yeah, I'm looking at this stuff right and I'm like "self what have you gotten us into," and looking over at dad I could HEAR the I told you so if I didn't take a bite, aww man the amount of scolding for not just ordering the damn burger, "yeah self you see dad you better eat this stuff or else you will never hear the end of it." So I grab a tortilla, pile in some meat and peppers, add a little sour cream, some guac, a little cheese and I take a bite. Tastes pretty good, really tasty actually so the first one is finished pretty quickly which of course should have let me know I was in deep trouble. I make a second one and take a few bites of it, I figured "mwahahahahaha see I got to live, nyah dad this is good" about half way through my second fajita that "out of season(traaamp) horse radish" begins to kick in. My sister notices me sweating(oh yeah she was gonna have jokes too) my mom starts asking me if I'm alright and while I was about to say yes, my tongue decided to catch fire. Unfortunately I still had to eat this stuff, sooo I finish the second one and proceed to drink every bodies water at the table. Four glasses of water GONE, I mean inhaled I don't even remember them touching my tongue, and I made another fajita(again I did not want to hear how I wasted money so until my father FINALLY said it's okay you don't have to eat anymore I had to keep eating, well I didn't but in my head I thought I did) I don't know if it was "punishment enough" or pride at the fact that I would not be whipped after having made my bed about half way through my father took pity on me and told me I didn't have to eat anymore. The problem of course now was the heat in my mouth, so a pitcher or two of water later(yes I had my own personal pitcher of water at the restaurant), two bowls of ice cream, a bunch of heaving breaths of air and another pitcher of water at the room later and finally my mouth cools down.

Did I mention that before that point in time I was terrified of hot food, if I saw you put hot sauce on something that was it, I wanted none of it even if it was mine you now owned the hot sauce cootied item. Now in most likely ANYBODY ELSE'S family this incident would be seen as you know dead and buried it happened, glad you're okay, next time take the safe route yadda yadda but oh no, not mine. Now EVERY time one of us gets a little rabbit in our head that wants to try something new what do my parents say "Let the boy live", which of course immediately gets me to step away from it I tried to live once(I mean thanks to it scorching my taste buds I love hot foods now, I have already been through the fires once whats to be scared of now) and I damn near died so that is like saying "hey would you like to damn near have your tongue fall out of your mouth and blow hot flames out your butt for the next day and a half" which after dealing with it once I of course will say no. And of course every girlfriend that has ever met my parents has heard this story(again I don't remember where we were going, because the destination no longer became important after I swallowed hot lava), it has been told to my younger brothers, some cousins, basically any time I appeared to be ready to go off and do something so a little off the wall(or my brothers, yeah they have heard that a few times and then the punks look at me and either stop or shrug and do it anyway, traitors) I had to hear that phrase "let the boy live." Now as a grown man, it does give me pause, just the other day we were at the hospital with my sister and I had mentioned some hospital Lemon meringue pie that she hadn't touched when we had brought her some food. Now I thought that you know you couldn't mess up pie, but the Lady was like "go head try some Let the boy live," and ummm yeah I passed, what I like LMP and if that was a nasty variety why have that on my taste buds?

So yeah a little under 2 months to my 37th birthday and I STILL have to hear "let the boy live", oh well these are the stories that create the person we become and I hope you enjoyed this one. Who knows maybe I will write another blog later