This is Evan. Evan is my little brother. There are many funny stories that I could tell about Evan but there are two in particular that have been tickling my memory as of late.
We grew up in Houston, Texas. There is (or was) a grocery store in Houston called "Fiesta!" I think that there was actually an exclamation point in the name. I suppose that I could stop writing right now and Google "Fiesta!" and find out if this grocery store still exists, but I won't. Whether or not Fiesta! is still in business is irrelevant to the story.
Fiesta!, as the name suggests, was a market which catered to the Hispanic members of the community. They sold some really cool stuff that was unavailable at white-folk supermarkets. Notably, there was a juice bar - way before "juice bars" existed - that sold "refrescos" out of big glass barrels. There would be about five of these immense barrels on a countertop; the drinks were served with ladles. They sold such flavors as watermelon juice, tamarindo, horchata, jamaica, cantaloupe juice...they were all legit and all delicious.
Fiesta! also had an incredibly varied selection of fresh and dried hot peppers. Once, when I was about twelve and Evan was about nine, I broke open one of the dried hot peppers while we were going though the produce section, guarding the pepper seeds in my closed palm.
Once we were well away from the produce section - somewhere near the yogurt, I think - I told Evan to open his mouth and close his eyes, I'd give him a great big nice surprise. Ever-trusting, Evan squeezed his eyes shut and open his mouth, allowing me to drop a couple dozen hot pepper seeds into his mouth.
The resulting antics were very humorous for me. My Mom seemed torn, not sure whether she should laugh, admonish, or both. I think she chose the latter.
I think that Evan was kind of upset with me, but I can't really remember, honestly. What I do remember, however, is that sometime near the end of our grocery trip, I needed to rub my eye.
I had completely forgotten about the hot pepper seeds that had so recently been between the thumb and index finger of my right hand. Even if I had thought about it, I'm not sure that I would have made the connection between residual chili oil on my digits and the insane burning that quickly inflamed my right eye after I dug around in it with my finger.
I think that Evan thought that this was funny. I think that this is one of the first times that I had a clear understanding of the expression "instant karma".
Another time, when we were both old enough to understand sexual innuendo - say 13 and 16 years old - we again found ourselves at Fiesta! and again, the produce department was the site of our grocery store hilarity.
There was an end cap stocked with enormous, dark-green cucumbers. I would suspect mutant GMO cross-breeding had it not been the 1980's - did GMO start before then...? In any case, we were standing near a display of very impressive cucumbers when an elderly woman and another lady who must have been her aide came walking along.
The woman was really old; she was hunched over, hobbling along with the help of her chaperone, and dressed up far too nicely to be doing her grocery shopping at Fiesta!. She had the creaky old-lady voice and she was complaining about the poor quality of the produce. My memory is faded, but I believe that she was lamenting the withered size and lackluster appearance of certain vegetables.
I say that, because my next memory is crystal clear: Evan and I both watched as she picked up a gargantuan cuke in her gnarled, jeweled hand, shook it at her aide, and said, quite loudly, "Now, this is about the size I like!"
If you know Evan, this will be much funnier to you. He turned his back to the woman and her accompanying helper, opened up his big blue eyes even wider in a beautifully theatrical expression of shock, and then squinted one eye and gave me a snide half-smile as he nodded knowingly.
I'm sorry that I can't explain his face any better than that, but at the time, I think I peed my pants a little bit. Or a lot. His timing, the fact that I was ten feet from the poor old woman and I shouldn't have laughed, the fact that she even said it, straight faced, was too much.
Evan was and is forever getting me to laugh when I am not supposed to and even better, when I don't think I can. Thank you, Evan.
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