It Burns So Good

This post is part of a series where we are highlighting the work of students working on their humor writing skills. Enjoy!

Flaming taco!

by Joshua Santos, St Augustine, Florida

I like my tacos like I like my wars: face melting, earth shattering, tongue burning, pain inducing, waterboarded and expensive. I want to be left wondering if the devil had just taken a crap in my pork, then came back and took care of whatever the hell the cabbage is covered in.  Then on top of that, I pour whatever hot sauce is within reach on top of it all, just to make sure it is going to make me cry.

Why do I do this to myself? Well according to the Internet, I am addicted to pain.

While that would explain why nothing feels better to me than the after effects of coming down from a good second degree burn in my mouth, extending from the top of my lips to the back of my throat, many things are just best left unanswered.

I want to know why I want to be left with PTSD, like the guy in the helmet cam video of a soldier surviving and IED blast.  That is real pain.  Yet my profession does not allow me the opportunity to experience such a pain.

Pain is a human emotion, yet the closest I can get to a napalm blast is if I destroy my innards with a somewhat Mexican style dish.

Why must we confine ourselves to the protection of cubicles, while we sit in front of massive screens that give us the world at our fingertips?  There is no feeling or emotion in any of that.

Where is the action, the excitement, the spunk America had when it could Banshee scream its way to victory anywhere in the world?

Now it seems like everyone is afraid to step outside, and the ones we send overseas to fight the wars set up by the people we elect to power, come back to America feeling pain, regret and sadness.  Much like the feeling I get after eating a taco.

We send soldiers off to experience “war” and come back to lead a normal life once all has been said and done, or continued in a never-ending fashion. Yet Joan Baez once said “If it’s natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?”

Much like how I had to train myself to handle that much spicy goodness, no one jumps straight into battle.  First a soldier has to be trained, housebroken, chewed up, spit out, and put on a ship and/or airplane.  In my case it is a shell, a crunchy crunchy shell wrapped around another soft shell and glued together with cheese.

Yet we do these jobs and experience life in the most dramatic ways possible.  Yet we fall flat, lose contact, move on and never speak of it again.

So now I stay eating tacos to burn all my feelings away.  Hanging out in taco shops and drinking beer that does nothing to help kill the burning sensation left by many chopped up habaneros.

I would rather cry from having too much spicy flavored goodness in my mouth than to cry protesting at a rally because cops just launched tear gas to disperse the crowds.

So the next time you’re enjoying a taco, douse it in flames and enjoy the burn, because it is the only thing worth feeling nowadays.

Share
Share