I hope you had a great Fourth of July weekend. I sure did. Apparently, the neighborhood kids are still celebrating their Independence Day because they have been continuing to light off little sticks of dynamite throughout the entire week. This makes me realize two things:

1) I miss summer vacation
2) I should stop selling matches to the neighborhood kids

But this year I had a nice little five day break and went back to my old stomping grounds back home. See, they have a nice weekend long celebration for the Fourth and it’s always worth going home for (it’s also worth it because then I can hit my Mom up for some more money and drink her booze all weekend).

You have the usual July 4th festivities-fireworks, lots of expensive food vendors, block parties and the ever-wonderful Fourth of July parade downtown. I use to be a participant in this event during my glory days of High School marching band, but now I am among the throngs of spectators. Now as a spectator to these things, I realize just how boring and stupid parades are. Think about it, aren’t parades just standing in one spot for an hour and waving, “hi”, at complete strangers? You can’t do it at any other time, trust me. Try driving your car at a whopping 4 miles-per-hour with the windows down and wave at all of the other drivers who are honking at and passing you. Sure, they’ll wave back, but it won’t be with all of their fingers up at the same time.

So for those of you who have a calendar, you’ll see that the Fourth fell on a Tuesday this year. So while I had the hometown celebration over the weekend, I had Jack squat to do on the actual Holiday.

Fortunately for me, television and sleeping in was invented. UN-fortunately, most of the stations were only showing a marathon of the same show and since none of the shows had, “The Facts of Life” in the title, my picks of televised entertainment were very limited.

So I did quite a bit of channel surfing. I wasn’t having much luck and feared that I would actually have to do something productive when I landed on ESPN. Much to my delight, the channel was showing the 90th edition of the “World Famous Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest”. I watched in awe as some dude who probably weighs as much as one of my toe nail clippings ate 53 ¾ hotdogs in 12 minutes.

This was a new beginning for me.

See, I’ve been a bit restless lately. I can’t seem to sit still and am always thinking that I should be doing something else than what I am doing now, but have never been able to decide exactly what that, “something else”, was. But watching skinny dude devour his way through almost 54 frickin’ hot dogs gave me an epiphany of my life’s true calling:

Ray Tice: Competitive Eating Master

Now I love to eat, just ask those people that threw me out at the Chinese Buffet (“all you can eat” my ass). Thing is, I’ve never eaten competitively. After the unfortunate incident at the “fire juggling” contest I held in my backyard last year, I knew that if I was going to claim that I knew how to do something that I would have to practice it first.

Now since I have a strict no-compete clause against myself (I'm a poor winner AND a poor loser all wrapped up into one!) I had to find someone else as competition. I decided to use this opportunity to introduce myself to my new neighbor.

Me: (banging on the door) Hey loser!

Neighbor: Can I help you?

Me: I’m your neighbor. Learn my name. It’s Ray. I rule.

Neighbor: Aren’t you the guy I had to chase out of my car the other morning?

Me: Not my fault you didn’t lock it.

Neighbor: Okay, yeah. So uh…what do you want?

Me: I know that we’ve had a lot of problems in our history…

Neighbor: We don’t have any problems.

Me: Well you just interrupted me that’s a problem. That’s OUR problem.

Neighbor: Okay…

Me: And the only way we’re going to solve it is through a competitive eating competition, punk!

Neighbor: Are you alright?

Me: ALRIGHT ENOUGH TO KICK YOUR ASS!

So after having the door slammed in my face a few times, I broke in through his window.

Neighbor: What the hell is the matter with you?

Me: Competitive eating contest…NOW!

Neighbor: Will that make you leave me alone?

Me: Yes.

Side note…I had my fingers crossed!

So my competitor didn’t have over 100 hot dogs in his apartment (weirdo!) and we had to make do with saltine crackers instead. I offered to call the local newspaper to cover the event, but he declined. It was probably better that way because I would have had to use a fake name since they don’t accept calls from me anymore.

We sat down at his coffee table and readied ourselves. I did the countdown from 3 to 1, but snuck in a head start and started shoving the crackers in my mouth at around the 1 and a half point.

I hurriedly stuffed the saltines down my gullet and glanced at his progress out of the corner of my eye. I nearly choked on the food as I watched him calmly eating his selections. I had this one in the bag for sure. I was going to be a pro in no time and had no doubt in my mind that I would be the one celebrating my hot dog eating championship win next July.

It was then that I heard something…something BEAUTIFUL emit from my bitter rival’s television set…

You take the good, you take the bad, you take the both and there you have the Facts of Life! The Facts of Life!

Oh my God, The Facts of Life was finally on! And…oh crap…it’s the one where Blair’s crippled cousin Geri comes to the school to show off her comedic talents but Blair’s all pissed because she thinks everyone else likes her cousin more than her and she’s always had to play second fiddle to her cousin because she’s much more talented, but dammit, she’s prettier and she should get all the attention but then she learns that real beauty comes from the inside and she should stop being such an ass and love her cousin because she’s family and family is really what counts not who likes who more but then you wonder if she’s going to set the school on fire later on to teach the other girls and Mrs. Garret a lesson for being such douches to her in the first place!

I sat there with half chewed “Premium Cracker” in my mouth as Blair told her cousin to take a flying leap. This was my downfall. You see, as I was in television heaven, the 12 minute time limit expired and my neighbor…well, this is kind of hard for me to say…beat me.

So my dreams of being a competitive-eating champion have been put into my drawer of things I said I would do but never followed through on (it currently sits next to “Tractor/Trailer manufacturer"). But don't worry, I will keep trying to find my new calling in life. Luckily, Labor Day will be here before we know it and maybe Jerry Lewis and some of his kids will give me some ideas!

Copyright © 2006 Ray Tice
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

Send by Email! | Contact Us! | Permanent Link