Young Men and Egos

[Pulsegleaner]

I have an awesome "boys and hot peppers" story. Get called in the middle of the night for a vaguely described "sick call" get to the house and there are a "herd" of young late teens early twenties healthy looking young men, all laughing and carrying on. I inquire as to who is sick and called for the ambulance. One young man stepped forward (very healthy looking but wearing a bathrobe which I thought was odd given the circumstance) Well the young man proceeds to tell his story of the jalapeño pepper eating contest they had just had, but seems this future president answered the "call of nature" (or so his story went I personally have other ideas of what really happened) w/o first washing his hands. He had 3 very important questions (to him anyway) 1) Would the burning ever stop? 2) Did he do any permanent damage? 3) Anything he could do to speed up the stopping of the burning. There were however not cute girls to impress.

I'd laugh, but truth to be told I did the same thing to myself once, more or less (in my case it was a concentrated solution of long pepper (Piper longum, a black pepper relative used in Indian and ancient cooking) (I had found some old long pepper in the spice cabinet and wanted to see if I could get it to grow) Until that happened, I didn't know it was POSSIBLE to injure yourself with piperine (unless you're an insect).

I also remember the old Medieval Hungarian anecdote.

Two farmers from the country came to the big city to sell their crops. They found a buyer, and surprisingly made far more for their produce than they expected. To celebrate, they decided to go to the best inn in town, the one the rich people went to.
Once the sat down, they looked around and noticed that all of the rich people had tiny dishes of white slices sitting by them, and were picking them up and nibbling them. They called over the Barmaid and said " what is that white stuff the rich people are all eating?" The barmaid said "Oh that is horseradish", Oh well have some of that. A few minutes later, the barmaid approaches with two tiny dishes. The farmers said "No no, we are rolling in money, we'll each have a BIG plate."