by Anonymouse

Created on: March 01, 2010   Last Updated: March 10, 2010

A Serrano Story

When I was nine years old, my parents decided to plant a family garden. My younger brother and I were recruited to sow Serrano pepper seeds. If we watered them enough, they would ripen beautifully on our decrepit back patio, and we would be allowed to pick them ourselves. The journey began with three large terracotta planters. We filled them with store-bought fertilizer and planted plenty of harmless little seeds.

My brother and I took turns watering the peppers, but we were hardly interested in their progress. Both of us had been warned against eating them from the beginning. Our parents didn't even enjoy spicy food, so before long, I began to wonder why we had planted them in the first place. If nobody was going to eat them, what exactly what were they for? Then I figured it out: They weren't really spicy!  That was a trick to keep children from devouring the Serrano peppers and ruining the garden.

My little brother was seven. He felt the same way about spicy foods as I did. When I let him in on the secret about our not-so-hot peppers, however, he became much more open to the idea of trying a Serrano. His turn to water the garden came the next evening. When he walked onto the patio, he was calm and collected. I was reading the Sunday funnies in the living room. I didn't even notice him slyly sampling one of the ripest yellow peppers, though I could see him clearly through the sliding glass door.

I wasn't sure what possessed him to strip down to his whitie tighties at first. Thinking back, he probably would have done anything to cool down at that moment. He circled the patio, flailing his arms and sticking out his tongue. "Uh oh," I thought, placing my hands worriedly on my head, "I'm going to get it for this one." I ran to the kitchen and got him some water. When that didn't work, we tried milk - and it helped immensely. He put his clothes back on, and from that point forward, we listened to our parents when they told us what we should and shouldn't eat.

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