Monday, August 02, 2004
 

Saltine Challenge

I'm current at home-home, in Armpit, USA, visiting the folks. Perhaps you conjure up images of a family, united, sitting about the dinner table, exchanging stories that provoke genial laughter as people pass the bread basket kindly to and fro.

Right.

So three of the four of us have a nasty cold, and we're all still in the coughing-sniffing (well, snorting, really) phase. I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, because we don't eat dinner until around 7:30, and on Mondays, I watch Trauma: Life in the ER at 8:00 (to be followed by Bodywork). We're eating chowder (which my brother says dozens of times in his best Maine accent), so there are crackers on the table. Well, the conversation (such as it is, given all the various coughs and pauses to locate Kleenex) takes a [downward] turn to the Saltine Challenge.

For the uninitiated: The Saltine Challenge is a game in which you are challenged to eat eight saltines in two minutes or less without drinking any fluid.

How could anyone turn this down? I went first but still had three crackers remaining (my father commented that I'd never had a chance, given that I eat "microscopic" bites of any food). My brother went next (I believe he said that he'd won this particular challenge before, at school) but still had a cracker and a half to go. He cited his dry mouth (from the cold) as the probable cause for his reduced rate of speed. Both parental units declined to participate directly in the challenge itself, but my mother acted as timekeeper, and my father provided commentary.

So, that's my little gather 'round the hearth story. Touching, ain't it?

Oh, and extra-extra: I've decided to break the rule of 3, regarding the reading, listening, etc. Because she has a more exciting life than I do, Alice will now get her own entry below:

Reading: The Angel of Darkness
Listening: Nellie McKay, Get Away from Me
Current Obsession: plastic surgery TV shows
Alice is: climbing all over the computer

Elvisette philosophized at 10:28 PM