Anyone who knows me well knows that I love to eat, and beyond that, I love to eat mass quantities of food.
The week before classes start, fraternities and sororities hold their work/spirit weeks. Every work week, my house has the tradition of going to a restaurant in Chillicothe called Castaways. It started three years ago when we found out about their specialty burger, the O-Burger.
It takes an hour to cook and is basically just a giant, deep-fried ball of meat stuffed with various toppings. Oh, and its made with an entire pound of ground beef.
Last year, my friend found out they have a $20 challenge in which the contestant must eat two of these heart-attack beef balls and a pound of fries or onion straws in under 30 minutes. For whatever reason, he thought this was doable. After watching the monstrous plate defeat him, I told myself when I returned for my senior year, I would take on this challenge.
Since Im a man of my word, I gathered a group this past August, placed the order [in advance?] and drove out to see if I could summon the strength to eat it all.
Even as we parked the car and sat down at our table, I already hated the decision I had made. Whats worse was that I wasnt completely hungry, either, as I had two chicken bakes and frozen yogurt at Costco just four hours before.
After the fourth time of assuring our table that the burgers were coming out in just one more minute, the waiter finally emerged with a mountain of grease on a metal plate and an egg timer. There was no turning back.
The moment he set the plate in front of me, I actually wanted to die. I had never been hit by a bigger wave of regret than in that moment.
Before he walked away from my impending death, the waiter asked if we needed anything else. All I could muster was, A hope and a prayer.
Once the timer started, I cut straight through both burgers and tried to eat the four half-patties as fast as possible. I was shoveling handfuls of onion straws with each bite of the burger, and I felt like a machine, a really gross machine with cholesterol problems, but a machine nonetheless.
I was probably 16 or 17 minutes in when I finished both burgers, but then I immediately hit a wall. The onion straws were all that was left on my plate, but I had neither the desire or strength to keep going.
As if having all my friends around to make fun of me wasnt enough, three old ladies from Chillicothe stayed for the entertainment and didnt withhold their commentary on my impending failure.
As the timer rang out, and I sat staring at a half-finished plate of onion straws, I had never felt worse. Ive experienced being full in painful ways, but never this way.
Since it was a Thursday, my friends and I were hoping to make it out to Crusens, but I couldnt even think about putting anything else into my body. However, one trip on the Blue Bomb later, there I was waiting in line outside the infamous Farmington bar.
I honestly thought I was going to make it through the night until my stomach finally had enough of it, and I left to christen the backwoods behind the Crusens parking lot with the first vomit of the school year.
I guess the moral of the story is: if someone offers you a $20 gift card, a free t-shirt and a picture on a wall, make sure you can actually handle whatever the challenge is, or youll be throwing up at Crusens without even touching a drink.
