{Five Minute Friday}: Trust
As my glee that “fiasco” rhymes with “tabasco” subsides, I feel a twinge of guilt.
Sure, the poem I’ve written to roast … er … honor my brother’s 50th birthday is funny.
But what’s with the tabasco sauce?
Why, after 40 years, do I still bring up this “cruel…fiasco” every time I can?
* * * * *
In my hazy memory, I am four; my brother, eleven.
“Hey Cheri! Do you want some cherry juice?”
“Sure!”
I take a huge gulp.
And swallow fire. Gasp fire. Hear fire. Weep fire.
* * * * *
I get more mileage out of this incident than anything else in my childhood. It’s been memorialized in poems, elaborated in narrative essays, and inserted into almost every talk I’ve ever given.
The audience always laughs.
But what, exactly, am I illustrating?
What’s with the tabasco sauce?
What does…or did…it mean?
The answer, I find, is in the closing lines of a poem I wrote last summer, describing my aversion to risk:
“I avoid even a sip of cherry juice so certain am I that it will, once again, turn out to be tabasco sauce.”
What’s with the tabasco sauce?
It’s a 40-year-old metaphor, a concrete symbol of an abstract concept:
TRUST.
For four decades, tabasco sauce has represented my first experience with betrayal.
Then, I was four.
But I’m not any more.
Hi Cheri! I’m over from Michael Hyatt’s blog, and thought I’d meet you after all our back and forth. You are so right on the trust issue. And …you are not four anymore. Hope you and your brother have a great party. Be blessed.
Cheri, powerful ending. Betrayed at the age of four. I shared this story with Ellen’s family probably five minutes after I read it. We gathered for a special family evening (brother-in-law as the lead in “On Golden Pond”) and I read your post right before we had dinner. No Tabasco on the table. We were eating Chinese.–Tom
“cool” story! I could do a similar one with “Joy” as I once tricked my younger brother with a Joy-injected chocolate covered cherry (we were both kids). He has since forgiven me, and giving family members chocolate covered cherries is still a Christmas tradition/family joke.
Like the direction you took with this! So creative!
Great post. Love how you tied the two together. It is amamzing how something can burn an image in our mind and be a source of trial for many years to come. Loved reading your post. Be blessed today! Tirzah
Wow! I can see why this experience with “tobasco” is burned into your memory! Great post and great writing…