The Beginning

So as i sat at dinner last night at PF Changs, I bit into what I thought was a small shrimp, only to find it to be a quite spicy pepper.   In the moments following the searing pain i felt  in my mouth called to mind some of my fondest memories.  The particular memory that fueled my nostalga train was one that happened when I was 12 or so.  The majority of the entries in this blog will come from the experiences that I had from age 11 to 14.   

The previous mentioned memory begins with the announcement of a certain Young Men's/Young Women's Pot Luck Dinner.  At that time, Bryan Castle was our Young Men's leader.  He decided that for the pot luck, we should make the spiciest chicken wings we could.  So a few hours before we started, all the young men met up at Bryan's house.  He had made a trip to the store and bought in the ballpark of 30 different kinds of hot sauce, and decided to leave it up to us to decide which of them was the hottest.   This led to quite a few 12 year old kids expirmenting with various types of hot sauce by putting drops of their tongues.  If i remember corretly, we decided on which one to use when Daniel Wiberal started screaming and stuck a raw fish in his mouth straight out of the freezer trying to get the taste to go away.  When this didn't work, he ran outside to the hose, and with it on full blast, he stuck it in his mouth full blast which resulted in water spraying out of his nose.  Eventually he gave up and just drank some milk, and we decided that that was the sauce to use.  So we mixed that in heartily with some regular hot wing sauce, poured it over the chicken, and went on our way.

We took with us a sign that we put on the wall by our chicken that had a skull and crossbones with a disclaimer printed on it.  I don't remember the list of things it said, but it basically contained things like "Do not consume if you are not in good health, have back problems, heart problems, if you are pregnant or may become pregnant, etc."  Only several people dared try them with the smell and a sign like that.  Most people just spat it out right away or grabbed some water when they did.  One member of the bishopric who was a large-statured consturction worker actually left the room with tears in his eyes and didn't come back for quite a while.  However, one guy everyone ended up thinking was crazy sat there and ate like 6 of them.  Said he really liked them.  One bite was enough for me...even with everything i drank i couldn't taste anything for a week.

That called to memory all the things that we did as scouts, and for a long time i've been wanting to write them all down.  That's when i figured that this would be the best way to write them all down and preserve them.  Anyone who reads this who has stories to add or memories to contribute, send them to me and i'll put them up here.  I'm going to add new stories on here whenever i get a chance.