Oops, I threw up in my mouth

There are many stories in Iraq. Some, like those dealing with the success of the recent elections, are about victory. This, however, is a story about failure. A story of a man coming to grips with his limitations in a war-torn nation.
It all started with a simple conversation about “Cool Hand Luke”, the movie starring Paul Newman. In the movie Paul Newman accepts a dare to eat 50 hard-boiled eggs. Our conversation turned to stupid bets we have all taken part in. Someone at the table mentioned the “Dairy Challenge”. This bet is simple. Drink a gallon of milk in one hour. Sounds simple, but the rub is that stomach acids react to the milk and essentially turn the milk into cottage cheese inside your stomach. There by making it seemingly impossible to drink the entire gallon. Shortly after this conversation my good friend Myers asked me if I wanted some ice cream. Me, still think along the lines of the previous conversation, asked, “Is this a challenge?” To which he jokingly replied “Yes.” So we both went to get ice cream. Taking this as a challenge, I decided that the best thing to do was get as much ice cream as I could and top it with as much whipped cream, chocolate and caramel syrup and nuts, as the pap
er bowl the ice cream was served in, could handle. Upon my return to the table, with the mammoth sized serving of ice cream in tow, the concept of the ice cream challenge was born. It was as follows: 50 ice cream sandwiches in less than one hour. I proudly proclaimed, “Easy!” So then, as the saying goes, it was on. The rules were established. They were fairly simple. Rule 1: No vomiting. Puke and rally was not an option. Rule 2: No more rules. So there you go. It was very simple.
The next day my thinking was that is simply was not possible, due to the time factor. I thought it would take at least one minute to eat one sandwich. That leaves very little time for error. To test this time theory, that night, I got a head start and decided to see how quickly I could eat five. Total time for five sandwiches: 2 minutes 20 seconds. I felt very relieved by this fact. My number one concern was no vanished. At that pace it would only take about one half and hour to complete the entire feat. So I was confident, but not over confident.
For the next few days the careful stealing of 50 ice cream sandwiches ensued. All ice cream sandwiches were carefully collected in the freezer at our workplace. With the masses assembled I began my quest for immortality. At exactly 7:38 pm I began, and with mountains of ice cream sandwiches in front of me I eat my first sandwich in two large bites. I was feeling good and sailing through with no effort. My first ten sandwiches were vanquished in less than five minutes. I was right on pace, and feeling great. The next ten went down just as smoothly and in nearly the same amount of time. I had eaten 20 ice cream sandwiches in 11 minutes. Sure, my pace might have slowed a tad, but that was to be expected. What was not expected was the taste the ice cream sandwich took on sandwich number 21. The ice cream turned from sweet, delectable treat of goodness, to thick, creamy, tasteless brick of goo. I had either frozen off all my taste buds or the ice cream had gone bad. But I was n
ot going to let a little thing like taste interfere with my eating, so I powered through.
8 minutes and 30 seconds later I had reached the start of sandwich number 25. Things were obviously going badly. My pace was way off. I had wasted a good deal of time trying to simple things like drink water and breath, instead of staying focused on the task at hand, that being my desire to do something so stupid, it would go down in the annals of history. My brain and stomach knew they were losing, but my heart kept saying, “Fight on, man.” At 22 minutes in I had reached the halfway point and finished number 25. I had 38 minutes to go and only 25 sandwiches left to go. For the next several minutes, I powered through another five sandwiches, and was amazed to find myself sitting in a good position 30 sandwiches eaten in roughly 30 minutes. I regained my focus, and knew I could make this dream into a reality. At exactly 8:09 pm I took my first bite of sandwich number 31. I thought powering through each of the remaining 20 sandwiches was the best play. I figured that if I cou
ld eat each sandwich in two large bites, and forced the contents down my throat, I would surely conquer. I could not have been more wrong. The first bite of number 31 was over half of the sandwich. As I began to swallow, and felt the thick cream slide down my throat, something in my stomach fought back. The previous 30 sandwiches had all made a home for themselves, in my stomach, and did not like the concept of sharing their space with anything else. As bite one of sandwich 31 went down, it immediately came back up. I had a decision to make. I could spit out the rejected bite, thus forfeiting the remainder of the challenge, and potentially bringing on the outbreak of a greater number of previous bites. Or I could attempt to re-swallow. I sat there, for what seemed like an eternity, with a thrown up chunk of ice cream sandwich resting in my mouth. I made a choice and forced it all back down, and as soon as I knew I was clear I took bite number 2. This bite did not fare any bet
ter. Every subsequent bit followed the same agonizing path.
At 8:38 pm, Myers called time, and I sat there. 35 empty ice cream sandwich wrappers lined the trash can that had been strategically placed there. What started off with so much promise, ended in utter failure. It took me 22 minutes to eat the first 25 sandwiches. 9½ minutes to eat the next five. Over the remaining 30½ minutes I was only able to squeeze down five more. So there you have it. 35 ice cream sandwiches in one hour = failure. At least I tried. I, much like Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, dared to fly where eagles dare. I shot for the heavens, and missed. So I guess the saying is true, the surest way to fail at something, is to try.