Adventures in Adulthood
A series of memoir essays by award-winning writer John Sheirer (www.johnsheirer.com). Whether you're just beginning the journey as a young adult, enjoying your golden years, or middle-aged (like John), you'll find something to enjoy in these unique looks at the one wild adventure everyone from 18 to 118 has in common: adulthood. (Updates will come online roughly once a week.)
One Bite
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Disclaimer: Please don't read or listen to this essay while eating.
One Bite
Back in my college days, partly on a dare, partly from fatigue, and partly from infatuation, I ate an entire jelly-filled donut in one bite.
Three friends and I had gone to an all-night donut shop to blow off steam during final exams week at the close of a particularly challenging semester. We weren't terribly rebellious considering a dozen bars dotted the area. We were each just beyond the legal drinking age, but who needs alcohol when there are donuts to be consumed?
As the only customers in the place at 2:30 a.m., we each munched quietly on a fourth or fifth donut. The combination of study fatigue, suddenly full stomachs, and post-sugar buzz had set in hard, so we were in danger of falling asleep right there at our table. Something had to be done to liven us up before we drove back to the dorm to continue studying.
I slammed both palms on the stained table top and announced, "I can eat an entire jelly-filled donut in one bite!"
The sleeping high school kid behind the counter startled awake.
My friends jumped about six inches out of their seats, swore at me, and then started protesting.
"No one can do that!" Maria cried.
"Impossible!" Susan declared.
"I say bullshit on your donut!" Mike ranted.
Mike was pre-med. He had taken an anatomy final the previous day and an organic chemistry final that morning, and he was dreading a physiology final the following afternoon. His head was crammed with science, and his belly stuffed with donut sugar and fat, so he moved between anger and frustration, shouts and tears, more than a few times that night.
"If you can do it," Susan said with a sudden smile, "I just might marry you."
"Why?" Maria asked.
"Think about it," Susan replied.
"Oh," Maria said.
Mike tried for a few seconds, but his brain didn't have room to work out what they meant. I had only a slight inkling, and that inkling certainly made me look at Susan in a new way.
Maria pushed a blueberry-filled pastry--the last one left on the table--toward me. Blueberry was my favorite.
"I've been saving this one," she said. "If you can eat it in one bite, I won't marry you, but I'll give you a dollar."
"Me too!" Mike and Maria each chimed. Three dollars--this was getting interesting. I was a poor college student who saw actual paper money about twice a month. Three whole dollars qualified as an academic scholarship.
The donut was about five inches in diameter and two inches thick. Powdered sugar covered the surface, and blueberry jelly oozed from a dime-sized navel on one side. The thing looked pretty darned big as I examined it. Under normal circumstances, I would have needed maybe seven or eight good bites to get it down. But then I'd probably think, Wow, that was small. How about another?
I picked up the donut. It seemed to weigh a pound because, I guess, blueberry jelly is heavy stuff. Three pairs of eyes darted back and forth from my mouth to the donut, measuring. Their doubtful looks gave me the impression that the math didn't add up.
I turned the navel toward myself to prevent spillage and brought it to my lips. On the first push, a third of the donut easily entered my mouth. But then I encountered resistance and had to shove first from the left side and then the right side to keep it advancing, a fraction at a time, beyond the corners of my mouth.
This trundle method worked pretty well until the donut encountered my epiglottis, the little flap of flesh at the back of my throat. I began to gag. It took all of my self-control to keep from yanking the thing out of my mouth. At this point, the first tear plopped out of my eye and flowed down my cheek.
But I kept pushing.
The donut crammed up against the back of my throat and started expanding upward into my pallet and downward around and under my tongue. By then, it had lost most of its structural integrity, becoming nothing more than a fused blob of pastry and jelly conforming to the inside of my mouth.
The tears began to flow freely now, and some sort of liquid threatened to spill from my nose as well. I sniffled as forcefully as I could, snorting up a big dose of powdered sugar in the process. If the sugar had been cocaine, I would have overdosed. Every force in my body urged me to get the thing out of my mouth.
But I kept pushing.
A few more tucks at each corner, and the donut was inside. I clasped my teeth together and sealed my lips.
"Jesus," Mike gasped.
"He did it," Maria said.
All I could do was blink at them.
"Not yet," Susan cut in. "I won't marry him unless he swallows."
The three of them began chanting, "swallow, swallow, swallow." They started in a whisper, then built to a low moan. "Swallow, swallow, swallow."
For human beings, chewing usually precedes swallowing. I parted my teeth and closed them again, then repeated the movements a few times, being careful not to open my mouth--not out of politeness, but to keep donut paste from spraying across the room.
Normally, the tongue is used to roll the food around the mouth so that it gets ground up by the teeth. But this takes lots of open space, something I had none of in my mouth, filled as it was with donut. My chewing efforts managed only to mush up the small fraction of food stuff directly between my molars.
In short, the whole mess was stuck in my mouth with no real way for me to chew it. To my dismay, it was actually expanding as it soaked up my free-flowing saliva at an alarming rate. To keep my cheeks from bursting open, I had to do something fast.
"Swallow, swallow, swallow," they chanted.
My gag reflex came to my rescue. As I involuntarily tightened the back of my throat, I could feel those muscles smashing a small portion of the donut back there. In desperation, I clamped down harder and found I could actually do some primitive "chewing" with my throat muscles.
After a few more contractions, the back-of-my-throat donut was soft enough to get some down. I swallowed a small portion, freeing up enough mouth space to guide more donut to the back of my throat where I muscle-chewed and swallowed a bit more.
"Swallow, swallow, swallow." By this time, the high school counter kid had come over and joined in the chant.
I then discovered that I had just barely enough room to do a little traditional teeth chewing. This was tough going, but it began to work. Bit by bit, I managed to swallow more and more of the donut until the task didn't seem quite so daunting.
"Oh my God," Maria muttered, breaking the chant. "I think he's going to do it."
It took another full minute, but I was able to get the rest of the thing swallowed. My throat burned. My face was streaked with tears. Sometime during the process, I had lost control of my nose. The results were not pretty.
Susan grabbed a handful of napkins and mopped my face. "That was amazing!" she said, leaning in to kiss my cheek. When she pulled away, I saw tiny flecks of powdered sugar on her lips. I had never really looked at Susan's lips before, but I was having trouble looking anywhere else at that moment. Her tongue slipped out to lick the sugar from her lower lip, the fuller of the two.
"I don't believe it," said Mike. "Make him open his mouth."
Susan gently grasped my jaw, and I opened my mouth to display its lack of donut.
"Ugh," Maria moaned. Apparently, she had glimpsed some donut residue still in there. I took a swig of hot chocolate (now cold), rinsed it around my mouth, swallowed, and opened again.
"I'll be damned," Mike gasped.
"He did it!" Maria cried.
The three of them broke into applause. The counter kid offered us each a gift certificate for a free donut of our choice. Susan gathered up the three one-dollar bills from the table and tucked them into her shirt pocket.
"I'll just hold onto these," she said. "My abnormal psych final is over at noon tomorrow. If you meet me at the student union, I'll buy you an ice cream cone."
She winked at me. "I'm dying to see what you can do with that."
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Posted by John Sheirer at 3:16 PM | 1 comments
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John Sheirer
John Sheirer (pronounced Shy-er) is the author of the new memoir Loop Year: 365 Days on the Trail, which received the Connecticut Green Circle Award for environmental activism, as well as the 2005 memoir Growing Up Mostly Normal in the Middle of Nowhere, a finalist for the Sante Fe Writers Project Literary Award.
He teaches English and Communications at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he has been honored multiple times by Who's Who Among America's Teachers and recently received the Distinguished Service and Educational Excellence Award.
John lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy Barone, terrific stepkids Danielle and Daryl, and Daisy the amazing hiking dog. John's website is www.johnsheirer.com, and he can be reached at jsheirer@acc.commnet.edu or (860) 253-3138.
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Were you ever involved in 'whamo-ing' jello? For some reason, I think that you might be one of the ones who did that.
Congratulations on the donut - I am impressed.