It's Not The Heat, It's My Stupidity

No, this is not a post about the weather.  It's worse.  It's about how I recently felt that I was dying.  Literally.

If I had to go, this would be the location for me to leave this mortal coil.  The Dodger Stadium Club.  My friends know that I frequent the wonderful pre-game buffet at the ballpark.  An all-you-can-eat extravaganza that is perhaps the best food and value in all of LA.  Carving stations of meat.  Delicious salads.  Custom pizzas.  Even Dodger Dogs. 

I go there at least six or eight times during the baseball season and that's where I was last week when I thought I was dying.

Explanation coming.

I was on my customary third plate.  You go around the buffet and fill up.  You clean your dinnerware.  They quickly give you a clean one.  The first time for me was meat and veggies.  The second time was a palate cleansing potpourri of salads.  I was up one last time to grab what I had missed.  Most notably some grilled vegetables that were accompanying the beef tri-tip. 

I picked up the grilled zucchini and mushrooms and onions.  And, oh, what is this?  A pepper slice? 

Note to all:  not all pepper slices are sweet.  This one turned out to be almost lethal.  Likely a habanero pepper.  I might as well have swallowed a steak knife whle.

In the course of conversation, I popped the pepper into my mouth.  And immediately regretted. 

Wow, this is fucking hot!

My tongue was burning.  Or it might have been undergoing an out-of-body experience.  It certainly wanted to leave mine and fast.  I downed some Diet Coke.   That seemed to make it worse.   I grabbed my glass of ice water.  I gulped it down.  Even worse.  

Tears were pouring out of my eyes as if I had just been told that I could never go to a Major League Baseball game again.  Sweat cascaded off me like Niagara Falls.  This was no ordinary reaction to spicy food.  I felt like there was something else going on.  My companion was concerned but, trooper that I am, I said I was fine.  Almost dead, but fine.

I needed to move but I had no clue where.  I started to walk around the restaurant.  As I did, the burning now was in my chest.  With extreme pain.  For ten nano-seconds, I thought I was having a heart attack.  Gee, I wonder if I look as bad as I feel.

Yes, I did.  One of the waitresses there who knows me was eyeing me with concern.  I waved to her meekly as if I was saying "bon voyage."  In reality, I thought I was on a cruise to Eternity.

I considered that this was the bizarre ending for me.  A rare allergic reaction to a pepper.   I thought about the irony of it all.  Dying at Dodger Stadium.  Geez, that would make for an easy eulogy.  No work involved there.   Then the insignificance of dying at the hands of a pepper struck me.  Hey,what about Joan Rivers who, at the time, was still lying in a coma?  She had gone in for a minor procedure and never woke.  I had gone for an extra helping of vegetables.   And never recovered.

All that raced through my mind for about ten seconds.  But I resolved then and there that I was not going to depart without a fight.  I headed into the bathroom.  For what purpose, I was unsure.

But it came to me so easily as I stumbled into a toilet stall.  I gagged once.  And out it all came.  Two and a half plates of good food.  Last week's dinner.  Oh, what's that I see?   My God, I ate that at Easter.

And, suddenly, I was fine.  One small pepper seed had done all this as I surveyed the damage which made it all to the correct receptacle.  Puking and missing the bowl is so...well...college.  

Ten minutes later, I was back at my table and anticipating my sixth inning dessert of an amazing ice cream sandwich called Cool-A-Coo.  That's the kind of treat you need when you think you just died.

I was back at the Stadium Club three days later.  I mentioned the grilled vegetables and the hot pepper included to my waiter. 

"Well, you know that you're not supposed to eat them?"

I do know.  Now.

Dinner last night:  Chicken and vegetable stir fry.