I constantly find myself testing my hands and their tolerance for pain. Usually, it involves heat-challenging a frying pan sitting on a lit stove top, for instance. No oven mitts here. "Just you and me, frying pan. Mono y pan." And, not to sound cocky, but I usually win. I can't completely trace this weirdness back to one specific event. Though I have always liked fires, I'm not really a pyromaniac. In fact, as much as I do like a good fire, I also find that I can spend days, weeks, months even without fire and not twitch nervously. Thusly, no pyromania.
I do know that if my heat strength (as I call it) was not born of my time running food in a seafood restaurant, it was most certainly amplified by it. Sure, there are heat pads to protect the skin. But, who wants to be that guy when you have Frank and Ferdinand food runner stacking four and five scolding hot dishes on top of their palms just to prove that they can?
And, for me, it's not a masochistic thing. I don't need the physical to release pain or pleasure. I cry quite easily on my own. I cry at weddings. I cry at funerals. I cried at my high school graduation and my college graduation. I once cried at the end of Brother Bear, a Disney cartoon about a boy who turns into a bear. So, no. I don't need an excuse to make me feel. I cry when I'm happy. I cry when I'm sad. I cry when I'm crying and I cry when I'm laughing. That's something my parents gave me, gave all my sibllings, too. Sure, we cry when we're sad. Don't we all? But when my family is at our happiest, we sob-tears pouring down our faces into puddles at our kitchen table, our faces contorted, wrinkled, and red. Passersby assume horrible things have happened to us-an insane man with a hatchet, a pack of rabid dogs-insane rabid dogs with hatchets perhaps. But, we're simply loving life, laughing and crying about one of those "you just had to be there" moments.
So no, I am not a masochist. I like to think that my extreme heat challenges are just one of the last links I have to my earliest ancestors-you know Grandma and Grandpa Caveman Portman. It's a direct and deliberate fuck you to reason given to me from my monkey family of yester-millenium. All I have left of those hairy, poor-groomed relatives. In 2008, it translates into a fuck you to science and fact. 168 degrees kills skin cells? Fuck you science! Here's a fact for ya. I've got calluses more retardant than asbestos. Bring on the frying pan handles! Go ahead. Dip them in lava. Let's see who's laughing when I serve you your magma-basted baby back ribs. And, if I am indeed crying, do not make the mistake that the tears come by way of pain. Who's to say that I am not just amused by it all?
Originally Posted On Facebook.
I do know that if my heat strength (as I call it) was not born of my time running food in a seafood restaurant, it was most certainly amplified by it. Sure, there are heat pads to protect the skin. But, who wants to be that guy when you have Frank and Ferdinand food runner stacking four and five scolding hot dishes on top of their palms just to prove that they can?
And, for me, it's not a masochistic thing. I don't need the physical to release pain or pleasure. I cry quite easily on my own. I cry at weddings. I cry at funerals. I cried at my high school graduation and my college graduation. I once cried at the end of Brother Bear, a Disney cartoon about a boy who turns into a bear. So, no. I don't need an excuse to make me feel. I cry when I'm happy. I cry when I'm sad. I cry when I'm crying and I cry when I'm laughing. That's something my parents gave me, gave all my sibllings, too. Sure, we cry when we're sad. Don't we all? But when my family is at our happiest, we sob-tears pouring down our faces into puddles at our kitchen table, our faces contorted, wrinkled, and red. Passersby assume horrible things have happened to us-an insane man with a hatchet, a pack of rabid dogs-insane rabid dogs with hatchets perhaps. But, we're simply loving life, laughing and crying about one of those "you just had to be there" moments.
So no, I am not a masochist. I like to think that my extreme heat challenges are just one of the last links I have to my earliest ancestors-you know Grandma and Grandpa Caveman Portman. It's a direct and deliberate fuck you to reason given to me from my monkey family of yester-millenium. All I have left of those hairy, poor-groomed relatives. In 2008, it translates into a fuck you to science and fact. 168 degrees kills skin cells? Fuck you science! Here's a fact for ya. I've got calluses more retardant than asbestos. Bring on the frying pan handles! Go ahead. Dip them in lava. Let's see who's laughing when I serve you your magma-basted baby back ribs. And, if I am indeed crying, do not make the mistake that the tears come by way of pain. Who's to say that I am not just amused by it all?
Originally Posted On Facebook.