…to the ridiculous!

I had originally meant to describe my whole thrilling day of January 13, 2010 in one blogisode from the coffee talk in the morning to the intricate lesson plan of Renaissance art to the afternoon Declamations contest to the chilling images from Haiti pouring out of CNN to the wacky, silly, unbelievably fun Garbage Disposal eating contest of the evening.

But I did not want to diminish the power of Faisal’s speech just by recounting how strange each turn of the day seemed to be, and ultimately what a moving day it was.

So while it might have been very Seinfeld-esque to combine and blend all those things, I will dissect the day that day a little more straightforwardly.

Anyway, a month ago one dormitory of boys challenged another dormitory of boys to a soccer game—you know, one of those man-to-man-he-man contests of strength and wills that schools find fun to stoke a little friendly competition and enliven school spirit.

It was a very exciting game (words that don’t come out of my mouth very often!) but, as you might suspect, the most fun was the old camaraderie on-and-off the field as people shouted and caroused about whose dorm is better. I cheered like my brother-in-law (a true sports enthusiast and lover of life). Actually, I mimicked whatever the coaches yelled out to the team, I simply copied their words, but just sounded more like the lead guy on Coach (I had to make a sit-com reference—I really have few sports references of my own!) and looked uber-serious. It felt like a fun, fun game in the stands on a great autumn day.

Okay, you are caught up to speed.

So one of the girls’ dormitories decided to get in on the action and challenge my boys dorm to a contest—a contest in which contestants from both dorms tried to out-do each other in consuming gross food. The girls were all fired up about it—they were going to trounce the boys.

At first my dorm was a little apathetic in signing on for the spirited contest. (By the way, the Renaissance can be referenced here as well—contests were all the rage in the Renaissance, used very much like American Idol to stoke the fires of civic pride.) So I volunteered to be one of the contestants. And, well, others, my shebab, (Arabic for “bros”) jumped on the bandwagon.

The contest was held in our smaller auditorium. One group got together to plan what the gross food ought to be for the contestants; one group chose judges and set the rules; one group took care of the logistics of securing the venue and all those other things. This contest was going high-tech!

I showed up for the contest last week and surprisingly, the Lecture Hall was packed. A couple hundred people had ventured over to see how the gross-food smack-down went down. I figured it was going to be things like BBQ sauce over ice cream. Child’s play.

Oh, no. They had taken their time and carefully planned the 9 courses in this contest. There was an MC. There were cheering sections. The food was unveiled with the utmost drama and explained in gross detail.

As the first course was brought out by our smiling waiters (smiling actually a great deal like Joel Grey’s satanic MC character in Cabaret!) one of my shebab smelled the plate and abruptly quit the contest. It was a plate of hideous dried sardines. Quickly we found a heroic replacement.

Now, I am not new to food contests. At Hackley the History Department had an annual atomic chicken wing contest (And I came in second too many times!! That darned Mike Reist always beat me by one lousy wing!!! Curses!) and I participated in a Taco-Eating Contest one year as well—all in the name of school spirit, of course! I ate 13 tacos in a super-speedy time. And of course besides the official contests, much of my life plays like a food-eating contest…

I couldn’t believe how electrifying the mood was in the lecture hall. There was yelling and cheering and truly, the most energized moments I have felt at this school. It felt like the best pep rally/football game one could imagine.

In the rules, you had to eat everything on the plate, sometimes with your hands, sometimes with no hands at all, then show a judge your empty mouth, then jump up and see how you did in the contest. I was the only adult participating…although many were cheering me on in the back.

I’ll tell you, if I wasn’t a good sport, I might have leapt off the stage like my buddy Mo Q, who took one whiff of the dried sardines and headed for the Madaba hills! Try and imagine the stinkiest, awfullest, smell of thousand-year old fish, and that comes close to the first course. And because they were dried they were slow to chew. And Dry! Oh, this first course lived up to the name of the Gross Food Eating Contest. But I like competition!

I came in fourth for the first round. I noted how well the girls did. My team had some heavy-weight eating contenders, but those girls looked fierce. They wanted to win.

In the next course we had to eat pickled plums that had been doused with some concoction that reminds you of the word ‘heinous.’ I held my own in that round as I spat out the pits of the pickled plums and made great faces for the crowd. Actually, there were no forced faces just to be a ham. The food was so gross the faces came quite naturally.

The crowd roared as the courses went by, as more creative gross concoctions came out of the make-shift kitchen. Each time I finished my cheering section sounded its approval.

Then came the whole hot pepper. Interesting choice. Nothing like the course of hummus and goat brains and peanut butter. Just a plain, hot pepper to devour whole.

I am munching away on this pepper, mindful that I want to keep my place since each round, someone is eliminated (Oh, how, Dancing with the Stars! this all is!). My mouth is on fire as I chomp away, and a part of my brain wonders, “hmmmm…is it healthy to eat a whole hot pepper? Do I remember reading anything that it is bad for you, oh no, maybe it’s bad…I’m over 40, maybe it’s bad for you!") and as my mouth pretends to be the Fourth of July, I decide to, gulp, actually, not gulp, and not swallow the pepper, and concede. I am the one kicked off the gross gastronomic island at the end of that round.

But the rest of the contest was so fun to watch. That bizarre, kinetic energy that is school spirit whipped the crowd into a frenzy. I had never heard such yelling and excitement, well, maybe not since a West High-Elder game back in high school. I was standing with some faculty, yelling, laughing, enjoying the whole strange, ridiculous moment.

It came down to two boys and two girls. Then one boy and two girls. The boy was about three times the size of the girl, but she had been fearless in each round. It was such a pleasure watching this spectacle! Just beholding it was pure fun!

Omar and Lubna faced off. I forget what the last course was, I think some salt-y, bone-y type Arabic obscure food. It looked like Omar was ahead; indeed his posse gathered around as he slurped up the mess. The crowd anointed Omar the winner, and the guys went crazy. Then the photographer who had been preserving this gross gladiator contest for posterity stepped forward and showed a photo-finish. Lubna had actually triumphed.

Hey, the whole crowd had triumphed. It was a silly hour that galvanized us in the most juvenile and fun-loving way.

That day my students had tackled the most complex lesson I had devised for them; they triumphed. Faisal stood up and offered his diagnosis for some of the ills in the Arab world. Instead of boos or apathy, his peers offered him a thunderous applause and the acclaim as the winner of the senior class. That evening I slummed a little on Low-Brow Row and had a belly laugh and a belly-ful of an outrageous contest.

I know, it’s not the thrills of Manhattan, but thirty months into this project at KA, and I still find so much that moves and thrills and delights.

It’s never plain-brown wrapper here…