The Great Texas Pete Experiment

I love Texas Pete, but not quite as much as the guy who turned me on to it, my roommate.  The guy puts it on everything short of frosted flakes, and he even has to think about that.  I caught him lapping it off a set of taters once.  We go through bottles at our house like water.  Another thing about the guy is he is notoriously cheap.  I don’t feel bad about calling him out on the interewebs because A: he admits it and B:  he doesn’t read this blahg, so eff him.

Like most normal people, when we run out of something I just pick it up next time I go to the grocery store.  That means a lot of Pedro, as we call Texas Pete, purchases.  It dawned on me a few months ago that roommate doesn’t buy the Pedro.  Ever.  It’s easy to chalk it up to his cheapness, but there’s another component here- he doesn’t really go to the grocery store, or at least conventional grocery stores.  The guy does his grocery shopping at the food court at the Mall, which is less than a mile from our house.  He will literally go and buy meals worth of fast food from multiple restaurants and put in the fridge to be eaten over the course of several days. 

To give you an idea of how this guy operates, I’ll share a little story from our days living in Winston-Hell Salem.  He woke up one Saturday morning and went straight for a local hamburger stand.  When he got up to the counter to order, he unleashed a massive order of burgers, hot dogs, cheese fries, onion rings, etc.  As he ordered, he began to get self-conscious that the people behind him would think he was a fatty, so he topped the order off by ordering two drinks, so they would think he was ordering for two people.  He came home, parked himself on the couch and proceeded to eat every last bit of food.  I’m sure you are wondering if this guy weights 500 lbs., which he doesn’t.  He’s got a nice spare tire, but carries it well because he’s pretty tall.

Now that that you’ve gotten a peak into his lifestyle, back to the Experiment.  After it occurred to me that he possibly had not purchased a bottle of Pedro in the three years we have lived together, I decided to see if his cheapness or love for Pedro was stronger.  That was three months ago and he still hasn’t bought a bottle.  Let me remind you the small bottle costs about $1.  It’s not that he doesn’t miss it, because at least once a week he screams from the kitchen “Do we have any Pedro?!?!!?” thinking I have broken down and purchased some.  Little does he know I have a bottle hidden in my room, which I sneak around to satisfy my Pedro cravings.

One night we were ordering take out pasta and debating between a marinara and an alfredo.  I was pushing for the marinara because I can do that sans Pedro, but not the Alfredo.  After explaining this to him, he said “Well, why don’t you just go buy some Pedro?”  I had to call him out at this point for failing to buy any the entire time we have lived in our current house, and possibly all of law school as well.  He stammered, before claiming that he has bought plenty of Pedro.  That was six weeks ago and still no Pedro. 

For a while, my personal bottle was just sitting on my dresser.  That was until our wireless internet stopped working and my roommate ran up to my room to reset the router.  When he was about halfway up the stairs, it hit me that shit was about to get real awkward.  I jumped up and ran upstairs to find him bent over messing with the router and modem.  I eased my way in front of the bottle sitting on my dresser and stood there until he left the room.  Now I keep the bottle in a drawer and the experiment pushes onward.  It’s safe to say his cheapness outweighs his love for the hot stuff.

Tagged as: Texas Pete