Would You Like Pepper With That?

I would like to start by saying that it makes it really difficult to get back into a regular posting groove when you have the sneaking suspicion you have broken a finger. Now, granted, it's only my little pinky finger on my right hand, but still. You have no idea how often you use that finger until you suspect you have broken it. And before you ask me what I did to it, I have NO IDEA. Oscar is baffled by my ability to forget important things like "OMG, where did that MASSIVE BRUISE come from???" but when you have a three year old kicking, poking, elbowing and otherwise attacking you all day long, you learn to shake off the various hurts you accumulate in a day fairly quickly. So I don't know. I just know it hurts.

And now, on to the fun stuff. I was watching Turtle play with a pepper shaker today and was reminded of a moment from my own childhood. Back in the second grade, I was given a test to determine if I qualified for the "gifted" program at my school. Now, for the purposes of today's story, I'm not going to get into how that test led to quite a few of us having some of the most miserable academic careers EVER, but suffice it to say we will get back to it at some point. In any event, I scored high enough on the test to get into the Extended Learning Program the following year. That meant that once a week for the rest of my time in elementary school, I was pulled out of my normal class and placed in a class with the other "gifted" students, where we worked on logic problems and did experiments and learned critical thinking skills.

Looking back on it now, I'm a little resentful of the way I was pigeonholed as a "brain" and was saddled with all of the attendant expectations, but at the time, I LOVED my ELP classes. In fact, at the time, I loved being considered one of the "smart ones." It was like being a member of an elite group. Not to mention the fact that those logic problems and experiments were damn fun.

In fact, one of those really fun experiments had something to do with pepper. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember looking at the pepper shaker and thinking about how pepper is supposed to make you sneeze. And being a "gifted" student, and a somewhat analytical type, I started wondering what about the pepper caused the sneezing. And then I started wondering if it was really true that pepper makes everyone sneeze, or if some people just have an allergic reaction to the pepper and THAT'S what causes the sneezing. So I decided to perform an experiment of my own.

I snorted the pepper.

Yeah. You heard me. I snorted the pepper. A lot of pepper.

And I was a "gifted" student.

I'd be surprised that they didn't bump me back down to my regular class except for the fact that I tried very hard to conceal the fact that I, a "gifted" student, had just snorted a pinch of pepper into my nasal passages. On purpose. I may have been stupid enough to do the deed, but at least I was smart enough to cover it up.

Needless to say, I learned a little bit about the properties of pepper that day. Such as, it is never, NEVER a good idea to willfully shove pepper up your nose, unless you want to claw at your nose for the rest of the day and beg for a quick death. Just in case you were curious.