Ever since the day when our ancestors, the mighty cavemen, killed the first beefosaurus and dragged it back to the cave and threw it on the fire, man has been looking for ways to spice up their meals because, let’s face it, beefosaurus meat can be some mighty bland eating.

So our ancestors, the mighty cavemen, looked for various kinds of vegetation and what not to make the bland beefosaurus steak more palatable. He tried various combinations of plants, including deadly nightshade and at least two varieties of hemlock, which, of course, killed the mighty cavemen who ate them because, well, nightshade and hemlock are poisonous. The mighty cavemen did not know this at the time but they learned from their mistakes and they wept incessantly while mourning the cavemen brethren who gave their lives in the name of spicy cuisine.

Finally the mighty cavemen came up with just the right combination of herbs and spices and roots and barks and the first non-deadly hot sauce was invented, which resulted in much dancing and shouting and general prehistoric hoopla in celebration of this remarkable discovery.

Ever since that day, we have been attempting to boldly go where no Neanderthal has gone before in our quest for newer, hotter and more flavorful hot sauces. We have come up with various and some are better than others, but the fact remains that the ideal — yea the perfect hot sauce — remains to be invented.

I like spicy foods and I like to put hot sauces on many dishes. I have a couple of sauces at home that your average human being would not be able to ingest without a team of specially trained life-saving digestive system disorder specialists on standby because these sauces will absolutely just melt your lips. When I use these hot sauces, my wife wears the traditional haz-mat protective suit with accompanying gloves and keeps a fire extinguisher at the ready in the event I should spontaneous combust.

My mother-in-law, Delphia, shares my affinity for hot sauces, much to the chagrin of her poor husband, George, who is deathly afraid of anything spicy and fears these items will do her harm. He can look at just a plain old jar of ketchup and break into hives. Once he accidentally touched a bottle of Tabasco sauce and his head spun completely around like that girl in the movie “The Exorcist.”

So last week when Delphia broke out a brand new bottle of habanero sauce and set it on the dining room table at lunch time, George just about freaked out. And when George saw Delphia take said bottle and turn it up and smother (and by smother, I mean SMOTHER) her meatloaf with it, he went psycho. You know how in the cartoons when one of the characters sees something really dangerous and his eyes get big as saucers and pop out of his head about 10 inches and his tongue rolls out and hits the floor and you hear that AH-OOGA sound? Well, that’s what George looked like when he saw what Delphia did.

“Dell, that’s habanero sauce! You are going to KILL YOURSELF!” George stated emphatically as his saucersized eyes retracted back into his head. But Delphia, in her inimitable style, waved off George’s concern as she raised a forkful of the habanero-drenched meatloaf to her lips. She said it was a bit warm but not bad at all.

So here’s to Delphia and her willingness to take on the hot and spicy items of life, and here’s to George because, well, if you’ve ever seen somebody’s saucer-sized eyes pop out of their head, then you know just how funny that looks.

But most of all, here’s to our ancestors who died of nightshade and hemlock poisoning while trying to concoct the perfect hot sauce.

So please pause a moment to remember them the next time you’re enjoying a juicy beefosaurus steak.