Jim Kershner: I get fired up over this spicy concoction

It sounded like such an excellent idea, making jalapeño pepper jelly.

We had a countertop full of red, ripe jalapeños and a cupboard full of Mason jars. So, on Sunday, I commenced to seed, chop, slice and dice about 16 jalapeños. Little did I realize that I was about to render our entire house a federal Superfund site. Little did I realize that I would spend the entire day attempting to hose down key body parts.

Now, I know that when working with hot chilies, a person should wear rubber gloves. I know this in the way I know a lot of things right before I forget them. I also know that I should probably wear goggles, or even full HazMat headgear, if I don’t want to get hot, fresh, chili juice sprayed into my eyes. But I also know that this doesn’t apply to me, because I am immune. I wear glasses.

To be fair, everything was going just fine until we made one, tiny little mistake. We shoved all of those jalapeño seeds and ribs down the garbage disposal and flipped the switch.

The disposal hummed and clanked. My wife, Carol, proved to be the canary in the coalmine. She immediately began to cough and hack. Not a delicate, polite hack. A something-is- spontaneously-combusting-deep- in-my-lungs kind of hack.

“The peppers,” she gasped, in between coughs. “I think the fumes must be coming up from the disposal.”

“That’s impossible,” I said learnedly. “I don’t see any fumes coming up from the disposal. Here, let me just look right down into the disposal, by putting my face directly above it, while I switch the disposal on and off.”

Astute readers might be able to guess the result. Astute readers would be wrong. I did not immediately begin to cough and hack. First, I began to feel a sensation in my sinuses not unlike having a bottle rocket shoved up a nostril. Then I began to sneeze explosively, knocking over three Mason jars. Then I began to weep uncontrollably. Only a few seconds later, when the toxic fumes reached my lungs, did I begin to cough and hack.

We both stumbled out the back door, in search of fresh, cool air. After about five minutes, we felt well enough to compare abdominal muscle pulls. After about a half-hour, we felt well enough to return to the scene of the explosion. The tear gas had dispersed.

As we finished canning the pepper jelly, we shared a hearty laugh over the events of the day.

“I thought you were going to cough up a hunk of pleura!” I joshed, as I brushed away a tear of laughter.

My eye immediately clamped shut in pain, No, Carol had not punched me. Residual chili juice was on my fingers.

I know that you should never touch your eyes after working with chilies. I know this in the way I know a lot of things right before I ignore them.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, stumbling, one-eyed, up the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower and get rid of this stuff once and for all.”

The first thing I did was scrub my hands thoroughly with soap to rid myself of all traces of hot pepper. I congratulated myself on having the sense to take bold immediate anti-jalapeño action. Then I idly scrubbed the rest of my body.

An alarming sensation arose from the more delicate membranes. I don’t want to get too specific, but within seconds, I was painfully yodeling the lyrics to “The Fire Down Below.”

Apparently, chili molecules do not scrub off easily. The pain was so intense that, at one point, I involuntarily re-created the pose from Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

Now both eyes were clamped shut in pain. To sum up, I was now wet, blind, naked and straddling, in a metaphorical sense, the Homecoming Bonfire.

Fortunately, another half-hour of cool, clean water doused all of my brushfires. I could only chuckle about it later that night, as I distractedly stood at the sink, flossing my teeth.

Suddenly, an alarming sensation arose from my delicate gum regions. I began to painfully yodel a hitherto unknown tune titled, “The Fire Up Above.”