A Spicy Alternative to Antidepressants

I was not in a good place. I had recently lacerated my hand, which put me in the hospital for a couple days (more on that another time). Work was tough. I hadn’t laughed in a while. A depression was certainly brewing.

My wife decided that what I needed was to go to a community fireworks show, since it was the 4th of July and all. She’s typically a wellspring of great ideas when it comes to fighting my darkness, but occasionally she whiffs. Like the time she suggested we hire a contractor to turn a shed into a writing shack and paired that with getting a new Basset Hound. Between 6am nail guns and all-night puppy whimpering, we didn’t really sleep that summer. The puppy, who we named Captain Banjo Butterbuns, was naughty¹ more often than he wasn’t. I suppose you could argue that my wife was playing the long game because, beyond the puppy stage, Captain Banjo has been an endless source of joy. Case in point:

This is what an endless source of joy looks like.

Back to the 4th of July depression battle. I had been getting better at wrangling my mood. Somebody would try to convince me that the earth was flat or that Insane Clown Posse was the greatest musical act on the planet, and I would slip into bleak darkness. However, I could turn it around with a little mental recalibration—we need flat-earthers and Juggalos, I’d tell myself—two wonderful options for helping to define record-level stupidity and bad taste. Boom! The depression lifts. If the mental recalibration didn’t work, a good deed could do the trick—tell a woman when she’s got kale in her teeth or build a wheelchair ramp with my bare hands for the old man down the street who tripped on his fake teeth and broke his hip. Ya know, little things like that. Boom! The depression lifts.

So I went to this community 4th of July celebration with that can-do spirit. We arrived at a park, and I realized right away that the odds were stacked against me. An ocean of towels, sheets, blankets, and lounge chairs had already been laid out on a lawn the size of Montana. For an introvert like me, this may as well have been an eastern European dungeon in a Saw movie. Fortunately, some of our people got there early and staked a claim for us on the edge of an aisle, ya know, to give us a little space.

Our people, in this case, were Adam, Val, and their kids. When I say they were our people, I mean that in all the good ways. Adam is the kind of man who places friendship above morality. If I accidentally killed someone in a bizarre Hitchcock turn of events, I would call Adam and I’m confident this would be his response: “Give me 20 minutes. I’ll run by The Home Depot to grab the shovels and trash bags. You want anything from In ‘n Out?”

So we sat on the lawn, I talked to Adam, and things were going okay. And then the live music started. I love live music. I’ll wade into a crowd of drunk morons to hear The Stones, and I’ll stop in the Target parking lot to listen to that busker on the accordion. So I was prepared to enjoy myself. Even more so when the MC mentioned that the live music was being performed by the local high school. Few things give me hope like a kid at a piano or a few kids in a three-piece band. As it turned out, this kid was just singing vocals. Still, I was on board.

Then it happened.

The kid took the stage, stepped up to the mic, and the first few measures of the intro played. A wave of dread overwhelmed me. And then the kid started singing. The song? Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.”

I hate that fuckin’ song.

I hate that song with everything I got. I hate it so much that I can’t even articulate why I hate it. I can’t put coherent thoughts together when it plays. When I hear the intro, my body tenses up. Next I hear my teeth scrape against each other because I start grinding my molars. I feel compelled to force myself to vomit just to make a point that I’m unable to convey through traditional means of rational communication. And I have no problem with patriotic songs. I love living in the United States, for all its benefits and its flaws. I also love a lot of country music (Paul Cauthen, anyone?). This Lee Greenwood song, though, it makes me contemplate the philosophical problem of evil. If you love it, great, good for you. I’m not here to change your mind. It’s just important that you know where my head was at.

My wife knew. She’s familiar with my feelings on Lee Greenwood’s musical abortion, and she could see the look in my eyes. She’ll often say, “What’s wrong? You’re making the face.” She didn’t have to say that. She just said, “Why don’t you and Adam scout the taco trucks for dinner?” Translation: take your rage and depression for a walk, away from all these innocent bystanders.

By the time Adam and I get to the taco truck line, the “God Bless the USA” dumpster fire had fizzled out, and I was starting to see through the darkness with a little mental recalibration. We ordered and then hit up the salsa bar because my wife is a chips-and-salsa junkie. The salsas were in squeezable plastic tubes, spiked into an ice bath. I had seven little plastic cups lined up, and I was just about to start filling them when I noticed a man behind me, both his arms cradling what must have been $100 worth of tacos, burritos, and nachos. And he was well dressed: a blazer, a light gray polo, flat-front khakis, a braided leather belt. Seemed more like a steakhouse patron than a taco truck guy.

”Hey, man, I’m still waiting on my order. Come on up and get your salsa,” I offered. He smiled, thanked me, and stepped up, quickly realizing there wasn’t enough space on the taco truck shelf to put his food down so he could fill up his salsas.

“I got you,” I said. “Red or green?”

“Red, thanks.”

“My pleasure. It’ll be my good deed for the day.” I grabbed the squeezable tube of red salsa from the ice bath with one hand, and I picked up a little plastic salsa cup with the other. I aimed and squeezed. Nothing. Something was clogging the spout. Maybe a piece of cilantro or a tomato chunk. I gave it a shake and squeezed again. Nothing. I looked up at the guy and he raised his eyebrows at me, sort of in a dick way, like, “Don’t mind me, I’m just standing here watching my food go cold while you’re struggling to squeeze salsa.” He looked a little like this:

The face of a man about to experience trauma.

In retrospect, his eyebrow expression probably wasn’t so passive aggressive. But, ya know, a lacerated hand, crowds, the horrific cover of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”—my filter was fogged with tension. So I gave it another squeeze.

Full transparency: I’m given to exaggeration. Hyperbole is my native language. The story above all else, right? That said, there is little to no exaggeration in what I’m about to share.

I looked away from the man’s judgmental eyebrows and I squeezed. Whatever was clogging the tube became dislodged, and what followed was a firehose level of salsa intensity. The salsa stream hit the bottom of the plastic cup, ricocheted, and proceeded to drench the well-dressed man from head to crotch.

It was a deluge of salsa.

Salsa in his beard, all over his $100 worth of food, all down his blazer and gray polo, throughout his braided leather belt, everywhere. When I say I drenched this guy, I mean I turned this poor bastard into a picante-style Jackson Pollock painting.

An accurate re-creation of the salsa carnage.

I looked up. He did that thing with his eyebrows again, only his left eyebrow had a chopped red onion hanging off its edge. My mouth opened because I knew I should say something, but it took a moment. What do you say to someone you just baptized with a Mexican condiment? I opted to remind him of my virtuous intention. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “It looks like my good deed backfired.”

“Yup,” he said. “It did.” When he said it, he really annunciated. Again, in that sort of dick fashion. And then the red onion fell off his eyebrow.

“Probably not the fireworks you were expecting to see,” I said. He didn’t think that was funny. I immediately gave him all the napkins I could find. I even wiped some salsa off his lapel. Then I turned to look for more napkins where Adam was busy putting lids on his salsas.

“Did you see that?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You lit that mother fucker up.”

That’s when I started laughing. And I was desperately trying not to laugh. Which is like trying to put out a forest fire with a bucket of moonshine. I peaked over my shoulder and the guy was talking to the taco truck cashier: “Tell me you guys have a towel in there. These napkins aren’t working.”

The cashier said, “Nope, no towel.”

At this point I stopped trying not to laugh and took a few steps away so that the guy and his eyebrows wouldn’t hear me laughing. It occurred to me that I should offer to have his clothes dry cleaned, but I was having difficulty breathing. Also, his first experience with my depression-resisting good-deed strategy probably rendered him skeptical of future good deed efforts. After a minute or so of failing to sop up what looked like gallons of salsa, he gave up and walked off into the crowd with his $100 worth of ruined taco truck cuisine.

The taco truck called our numbers a minute later. Adam and I gathered our food—and our salsas—and headed back to the wives and kids. We talked about the fact that he likely had to return to his wife and kids and explain what happened. It occurred to us that I just became a core memory for that man and all his future 4ths of July. He almost certainly hates me with the same passion I reserve for Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” And fair enough.

Conservatively, I’d say I entered fits of uncontrollable laughter for minutes at a time over the next week (and two or three times while writing up this little barnburner). Lexapro, Zoloft, Paxil—if they work, awesome. Keep taking them. Fight the good fight. But consider hosing down a complete stranger with a squeezable tube of salsa. Because, as it turns out, doing so will keep the dark clouds away long enough to enjoy a pretty solid community 4th of July fireworks show. My wife, as usual, was right.

Nota bene: I told this story to my good friend Michelle about six weeks ago. She teared up with laughter. That was the moment I decided to start writing All Kinds of Funny. Thanks, Michelle. All the love, my sweet friend.

1. Captain Banjo was so naughty that he earned a tag line—Naughty Boy Choices, which my wife commemorated upon her yearly bangle addition.

The symbolic token of Captain Banjo’s shame, rendered in 24-karat gold.

---

Thanks for reading, subscribing, and sharing. Drop a comment below, ideally a story about a time you committed a horrific blunder in public. I’ll take all the laughs I can get.