 We went to a hot sauce festival.
In Texas.
In August.
With the rest of the morons who couldn’t seem to get enough torture from the Texas heat in August..
Here is some perspective if you’ve never done anything that approaches the idiocy of that move...
It’s like walking into a party in the ninth circle of hell and standing in line for two hours until you get to the front.
Then they douse you with gasoline.
From nine different hoses.
Before they light you on fire.
And then as your body bursts into flame you scream, "SWEET CUNT-KICKING WHORE I HATE THIS PAIN THAT IS MAKING MY BALLS SHRIVEL INTO THE BACK OF MY THROAT!!!"
They offer you a cup of water that costs a thousand dollars...
And you buy it.
Then they ask you which variety of gasoline was your favorite.
You try but you can’t remember which one hurt the most.
We also had an experience that reminded me that the wife and I have very different personalities. I believe that rules are a good thing and that when people adhere to them, it brings about peace. She believes that rules are set in place in order to annoy her and make her life difficult.
As the two of us entered the festival accompanied by a friend we noticed that there was a V.I.P. area. It was at the top of a long staircase and as we looked at the area we noted that there was free drinks and food, it was covered and shady and there were ceiling fans with water hoses that were spraying a cool mist on the Very Important revelers.
This was starkly opposed to the sweltering hot, dry and spicy area to which the Non-Important festival goers were relegated.
Fully aware of my Non-Important status, I resigned myself to my fate and began to make my way to the tents of fire with the rest of the riff-raff.
My wife, however thought that notion absurd, said “c’mon” and began marching up the stairs to the special V.I.P. area.
As we dutifully followed my wife I began to quietly panic.
Surely the crack security team responsible for keeping the riff raff away from the important people will see through this ruse! We have no badges, no credentials, no papers that indicate that we are important!
As we crested the stairs we saw the guardian at the gate who would decide our fate for the afternoon. It was an elderly lady in a festival T-Shirt. My wife marched past her without hesitating.
The woman started to protest but my wife dismissed her with a wave and said, “I’m cool.”
The woman shrugged and assumed that she was indeed cool.
My friend started to pass through behind my wife but he hesitated.
That was his mistake.
For you see, hesitation is for the guilty. For the guilty and the unimportant.
The security woman grabbed him by the arm and questioned the level of his importance.
He was trapped and at the risk of the humiliation of conceding his lack of importance, with a last-ditch effort, he raised his arm, pointed at my wife and blurted, “I’m with her.”
The security guard looked at my wife who, it had already been established, was important, to verify the veracity of the claims of importance from this person who hesitated like some unimportant person.
My wife nodded coolly at the woman who was then satisfied as to my friend’s importance and allowed him to pass.
I, however remained just outside the gate, frozen with panic at the horror I had just witnessed and looking like the Least Important Person in the World.
I quietly slunk back down the stairs with the Unimportant Masses and got in the beer line.
My wife called my cell phone...
Her: What the hell happened to you?
Me: I just couldn’t do it.
Her: We were in! All you had to do was walk in behind me!
Me: I can’t lie to that woman! She looks like my grandmother.
Her: Just come back and I’ll get you in.
Me: The whole thing is a lie! You can’t possibly vouch for my importance when you have no importance of your own!
I hung up and began to sob unimportantly.
She called me again…
Her: Honey, come to the V.I.P. area.
Me: No!
Her: Look I’ve talked to the lady at the gate and she’s expecting you.
Me: What did you tell her?
Her: Just come to the gate.
I don’t know what my wife told this woman.
I like to think that it was something along the lines of, “He’s the deposed king of a foreign country who has recently escaped from political prison and has had to flee with his family and the only reason that he’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt is that his robes and scepter are at the cleaners and in order to escape his captors he was forced to dress as a laughably unimportant person and he’s still in character.”
It had to have been something like that because when I arrived at the gate and my wife pointed at me and said, “That’s him!”
The woman fell to her knees and bowed to me.
Regardless, we were in. We had fooled this woman into believing that we were not only Important but in fact Very Important.
We were hobnobbing with celebrities and captains of industry simply because we were willing to back up our ruse.
It was right then, a mere five minutes after I was allowed entrance into this party that I heard a voice say with more irony than a black fly in my chardonnay…
“Okay folks, last call! We’re shutting the party down!”
I was later informed by the security lady that Very Important People are not normally in the habit of hurriedly gulping down the remains of other guests discarded drinks at a party while angrily shaking their fists in the air and cursing fate.
But I should’ve guessed that.
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Quirkee Voices 
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