The Great Jalapeno Disaster of '08.

Friday night, I came home fired up to clean the kitchen. First, though, I wanted to eat something, but man, if I got into cooking, I'd get all sidetracked and lazy and not do a damn thing. The only solution was to eat Mary's half mini bag of jalapeño and cheddar chips.

They were good. Too spicy for me to purchase on my own, but a fun taste excursion nonetheless. I washed it down with some diet pepsi I keep at my house for when my mom visits. No one reading this knows my food habits, but chips and soda are the least likely things for me to eat, like, ever. Unless there's alcohol involved. That's just how I get down.

So, maybe it's the white trash thing to do or my chip eating inexperience, but there were those bits of chip shrapnel at the bottom of the bag and the only logical thing was to pull at the bag to create a nice crease so as to create a virtual chute to pour chip crumbs directly into my mouth, eliminating the need for a middle man/hand usage. After this, I'd get right down to cleaning the kitchen.

However. When pouring the chips into my mouth like a lazy, overweight, starved lonely, single white girl child, a jalapeño laden particle ambushed my poor left eye. In a panic, I began blinking because I knew the searing pain that was about to take place. Immediately after the realization that jalapeño oil was about to burn my eyeball, it did, in fact begin burning.

There are times in my life when imaginary life-threatening events take place and I am wracked with anxiety over how I will handle myself in those situations. Walking home at nighttime, for instance. Riding the train. Dreams. Will I be able to fend off a mugger? Is someone on the train planning to rape and murder me when we get off at the same stop? Would I actually RSVP yes to Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson's wedding*? But who knows what life actions to take to prepare oneself for pouring jalapeño chips into one's own eye?

My first action was to turn on the sink and begin throwing water at my face, blinking all the while. This helped, but with every blink, I was reminded of my contact floating around in there, jalapeño chip bit trapped underneath. Thoughts of corneal abrasions, blindness, the possible admission to whatever eye professional that I have been wearing this same pair of contacts for months...a year? longer? I don't know!!!!...began exploding in my brain. I rinsed my greasy fingers underwater and made the executive decision that soap wasn't necessary. Pshhhh, water cleans oil all the time. :rolleyes: I jabbed at my eye and fished my contact out of the water/mascara/jalapeño abyss my eye had become only to experience a second round of more intense burning. With my contact safely on a paper towel, drying to a crisp, I grabbed a small glass, filled it with water, held it to my eye, and threw my head back with all the finesse of a 20 year old on spring break doing tequila shot #10.

Oh sweet relief. My relationship with water has always been a loving, successful, and supportive friendship. Never before Friday had I needed water so much and never before then had it come through so valiantly.

With one swollen, bloodshot eye and a drippy nose, my first thought in the moment's respite following the entire ordeal: I'VE GOTTA GET PICTURES OF THIS. Battery's dead. Where's my charger? Call Mary! Use hers! Head-related injuries must cause rampant nonsensically frantic behavior.




Photo shoot over and done with, I vow to never eat those chips again. And to also close my eyes when I'm too lazy to use my hands to eat.


*The life-threatening aspect here being my eventual suicide from perpetual nausea and/or sheer embarrassment.