Kids, Don't Try This At Home!

The following is the first “guest entry” on Mega Munch. It’s written by Jeremy, a good friend of mine and one of my biggest competitive eating supporters. Today, Jeremy and his wife, Lisa, also became first-time parents with the birth of their son, Hudson. That’s him at right looking hungry and focused.


Guest Mega Munch entry by Jeremy J. Sutton

Competitive eating needs to be left to the pros! I am a 9th grade English teacher and yesterday my class and the entire English wing of our local high school learned this lesson.

It was a chain reaction, something like that scene from the movie “Stand By Me,” where the overweight teen, who is tired of being made fun of for his weight, uses an organized competitive eating event to seek his revenge. His plan was rather genius! Eat beyond his capacity (pies) and leave no option but throwing up, which he did. He knew, like a nuclear reaction, that a vomit reaction would immediately follow. He sat back and enjoyed watching his fellow competitors and heckling audience members project their lunches and stomach acids all over one another (Mega Munch, may I suggest you post a video link of this scene on your blog?).

This story is not far from the truth from my experience yesterday. Unbeknown to me at lunch, the previous period before my class, a small light-weight (maybe 4 foot 10 at 85 lbs) student had eaten 10 slices of cafeteria pizza soaked in red Tabasco sauce in his first competitive eating event. He put it all down in three minutes.

When he entered my class he looked like he had digestive issues, because his hands rested on his belly as he tried to comfort himself. Once class began he complained about not feeling well. He is a daily behavioral issue, so I was skeptic to believe him, but as I walked by him during my lecture I could hear how upset his stomach was. It sounded like a lava lamp with a drain beneath it. Every few minutes the drain would clear and I could hear the gurgling. As I continued to lecture I noticed that the gurgling was happening more regularly and I could hear it from clear across the classroom.

I was no longer skeptic when I saw, in the corner of my eye, his friend laughing at him as the first dry heave warmed his throat up and prepared him for vomiting. Seconds later, with hand over mouth, he threw up and immediately swallowed. I could tell it burned on the way up and again on the way down, because he slouched forward. With his beady little eyes, one hand over mouth, one raised in the air to call my attention he begged to rush to the bathroom. I quickly excused him and many of his fellow students quickly worried about him, with the exception of a few adolescent boys that laughed loudly.

Seconds later, with the vocal cords of an adult male lion, he roared vomit into the toilet. It could be heard 25 yards in any direction. Worse yet was the fact that I could hear Tabasco soaked pizza dough splashing into the toilet water like land mines exploding on the battlefield. A battlefield it was for this young amateur gurgitator. He had lost the battle, but not the war (yet).

One of the students in my classroom suggested I go check on my competitive eating solder and make sure he is okay. As I opened the classroom door I found him walking back to class with a huge smile of relief on his face. It was apparent that he was relieved, but he left others in harm’s way. I also saw one of my colleagues, a fellow English teacher, pacing the hallway in front of her classroom with her hand over her mouth and I could see she was swallowing her own vomit and was in pain.

Afterwards, she explained to me that she has a very weak stomach and because her classroom is next to the boy’s bathroom she could hear the vomit with THX sound quality – as each piece of dough splashed she weakened and became another causality of the pizza soaked in Tabasco sauce war. What finally triggered her was the sight of one of her own students dry heaving as he heard my student puking in the toilet. A chain of events was set into motion and the casualties only seem to increase in her classroom.

My student apologized to my fellow teacher and entered back into my classroom with hands raised, singing a Queen song proudly and with a smile on his face, “We are the champions of the world . . . “

I informed him that I knew MegaMunch, who eats competitively, as his once sick sore little beady eyes opened wide as if it were Christmas morning and he responded, “tell MegaMunch to bring it! I’ll out eat anyone!”

I smiled and thought to myself and with my inside my head voice said, ‘yah, but amateur you puked and are therefore disqualified,’ but I needed to class back on track and I didn’t want to steal his thunder, because in his mind (and his buddies’) he won at eating and puking and therefore he is a double hero.

Good luck to him next time when the cafeteria becomes another unorganized eating competition and he has the support of 400 other freshman cheering him on as he dips his cheese pizza into a cup filled of Tabasco sauce so can soften the dough as does Kobayashi with hotdog buns; though the fact that this eating warrior does not know this is a proven technique and created it on the spot may suggest that he is a natural and has a strong instinct for this sport. I wish I could say the same about his academic ability in English.