Tough Mouth
TOUGH MOUTH – February 17, 2025 – Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA
Marcos Edwards sat at a lunch table with six other kids from his middle school. Julius Hernandez was next to Marcos and talking tough like he usually did. He bragged about breaking boards in his karate class and not flinching when stung by his brother’s pet scorpion. When it snowed, he stood outside without a coat and claimed the cold did not bother him.
“Any of you guys eaten a Ghost Pepper?” Julius asked the table.
Everyone shook their heads.
“I like them,” Julius added, pulling a bright red pepper from his lunch sack. “They’re hotter than anything else you’ve ever tasted, but when you’ve got a tough mouth and stomach like me, you can handle ‘em.” Julius took a bite from the pepper. He closed his eyes, chewed a few times, and swallowed.
Every eye at the table locked on Julius, and when he swallowed the pepper, the other kids gasped in amazement. Marcos saw how much they admired Julius and craved some of the same attention.
“Hey Julius,” Marcos said boldly. “Let me try some of the pepper. My family eats spicy things all the time.”
“Go ahead if you’re not scared,” Julius replied, passing the colorful pepper to Marcos.
Marcos picked it up by the stem. Up close it did not look scary, so Marcos put the tip of it between his teeth and took a small bite.
A slice of the pepper hit Marcos’s tongue. It felt like someone had dropped a lit match into his mouth. He dropped the rest of the pepper and screamed, “Yeeeeooowww!” Every instinct told him to get away from the pepper so he jumped up and ran toward the nearest drinking fountain to cool down his mouth. From behind him, he heard laughter coming from the lunch table.
Later that day, Marcos tried to explain to his brother, Oliver, just how hot the pepper felt. “Put your tongue into some boiling water or on a red-hot stove. That’s how it was. And they all laughed at me afterwards.”
“You should know not to put weird things in your mouth,” Oliver said.
“But Julius did it. I was just copying him. And now everyone’s gonna remember. I’ve got to do something to prove I’m not a wuss.”
“If it snows, you could go outside and take off your coat like Julius does. You could take off your coat and then your shirt, too, to look extra tough.”
“Yeah, I could, but what if it doesn’t snow for a while?”
“Then how about practicing until hot stuff doesn’t bother you? You could train your mouth until it was tough like Julius’.”
“Do we have anything hot I could practice with?”
“Let’s go check the kitchen.”
Oliver eagerly searched through every kitchen cabinet looking for something extra spicy. He found several bottles of hot sauce. The one he liked best had a picture of a kicking donkey on it. It was called, “Kick to the Face Sauce.” On the label it promised to “burn your taste buds off” and claimed to be “hotter than Ghost Peppers.”
“I think I found something,” Oliver called.
“What is it?”
“You can see later, but first you should do a test to see how this compares to Julius’ pepper. I’ll put a little bit of it in a spoon for you to taste.”
“I’m not putting anything in my mouth unless I know what it is.”
“You don’t sound very tough.”
Marcos glared at his brother. “Fine. I’ll do it, but only a little taste.”
Oliver carefully measured three drops of the hot sauce onto a spoon and handed it to Marcos. Marcos closed his eyes and stuck the spoon into his mouth. When his tongue touched the corrosive liquid, he immediately dropped the spoon and ran for the kitchen sink.
“Yeeeeooowww!” Marcos screamed before sticking his head under the water faucet. He let a stream of water rinse through his gaping mouth for the next five minutes. He finally stood up and looked at Oliver through tear-filled eyes.
“That was hotter!” Marcos cried.
“Hotter than the Ghost Pepper?” Oliver asked excitedly.
“A lot hotter!”
“Then they weren’t lying. It was supposed to be hot enough to burn off you taste buds,” Oliver said, showing Marcos the bottle. “If you keep practicing with this every day, pretty soon your tongue won’t feel a thing when you eat one of those peppers.”
“But I don’t want to burn my mouth every day! And it’ll take me ten years to get used to that stuff. I can’t wait ten years to prove I’m tough.”
“Don’t worry,” Oliver said sympathetically. “It’ll snow way before then. You can just take your shirt off when it does.”
Marcos looked at the bottle of face-kicking sauce in disappointment. “I want to look tough now,” he said with a sigh.
Marcos kept thinking of a way to use the hot sauce without actually putting any more in his mouth. How could he make Julius and the other kids know how hot it was and then make them think he was swallowing it? Could he secretly switch the bottle with one filled only with ketchup? Marcos invented multiple plans but kept finding flaws in them. He was about to give up and wait for it to snow when suddenly he knew exactly what to do.
“What are you smiling about?” Oliver asked his brother.
“You’ll see tomorrow,” Marcos replied confidently.
The next morning, Marcos woke up early to make himself a sandwich for lunch. He put two slices of bread together and then cut them in half. He peeled apart one of the halves and slathered peanut butter between the bread. He had just pulled apart the second half of the sandwich when Oliver walked in.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a special sandwich. I’m going to get Julius to eat this half.” Marcos grabbed the bottle of Kick to the Face Sauce and poured a thick layer over the bottom piece of bread before replacing the top. “You see, I’ll tell everyone I made my sandwich extra spicy. Then I’ll eat the peanut butter half and give the hot sauce half to Julius. When Julius takes a bite and gets up crying and has to run for the school nurse’s office, people will see me eating my half like it’s nothing. They’ll know I’m tough.”
Oliver nodded his head like he thought the plan would work. “Just don’t mix up the sandwich halves.”
Marcos grabbed two toothpicks, one with a red tassel on top and the other with a green tassel. He put the red tassel on the hot sauce portion of the sandwich and the green on the other. “There, now I can tell them apart.”
When it was time for lunch, Marcos made sure to sit next to Julius. He casually pulled food from his lunch bag, including the sandwich.
“I know you like eating hot stuff,” Marcos said loudly to Julius so everyone around could hear.
“Unlike you, I can handle it,” Julius said with a smirk. “When did you stop crying yesterday after tasting my pepper?”
“I wasn’t crying. I just got really thirsty and needed a drink. I like hot stuff too. I brought in a sandwich today that’s just hot sauce and bread. Way hotter than a Ghost Pepper.”
“Yeah, right,” Julius replied with a sarcastic laugh.
“You can have half if you’re not scared.”
“Me scared?” Julius snapped in his toughest voice. “Never. Give me the sandwich.”
Marcos fumbled excitedly for the sandwich which he had stuffed inside a clear plastic container. When he pulled off the lid, he could not remember which toothpick belonged to which sandwich half. He stared at them without a word.
“Are you gonna give me the sandwich or not?” Julius demanded.
It was too late to back out of the offer. Marcos decided it would be best to let Julius do the picking. “Here, you can choose the half you want.”
Julius grabbed the half with the green toothpick and said, “Okay, we’ll both take a bite and see how hot this really is.”
Marcos and Julius faced each other and slowly moved the sandwich toward their mouths. They chomped down at the same time.
For Marcos, his bite felt like sucking in a mouthful of fire. He instantly realized he had the wrong half of the sandwich. The hot sauce between the bread slices spread out like a burning bug crawling over his tongue. Tears streamed down his face.
Julius was also suffering after his bite, but it was not because of the hot sauce. His face turned red and he kept mumbling, “Peanuts. I’m allergic to peanuts.”
Both boys struggled to their feet holding their hands over their mouths.
“I’ve gotta go to the nurse’s office,” Julius stammered.
Marcos did not know where to find relief for his burning mouth so he followed Julius. Luckily, they found the nurse’s door open. She stood ready to treat both a peanut allergy and an overheated mouth.
“So how did your plan work?” Oliver eagerly asked Marcos after school. “Did Julius have to run to the nurse like you hoped?”
“Yes,” Marcos replied with some regret in his voice.
“Shouldn’t you be happier? Doesn’t everyone think your tough now?”
Marcos sighed. “Maybe being tough isn’t the most important thing in the world. And maybe sitting next to Julius during lunch isn’t so great either.”
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