The Dare - Fact or Fiction

One of the great jobs I had while in highschool was working in the dishpit at the Caronport dining hall. Basically all of us Port Kids (kids that lived at Caronport year round) would work in the dining hall during the summer months and it was great. You got to work with all your friends, make some money and have a lot of fun working during all the sport camps, retreats and conferences that went on at Caronport during the summer.

This one day in the dishpit I was on scraping duty with one other person and the other 4-5 guys were working the other stations in the dishpit (loading, unloading, pots and pans, spraying, etc.) Scraping was a great job because you got to talk to the people as they handed their trays to you (this was especially good during girls basketball camp, but that is a different story). The thing with scraping is that you had to be fairly fast because people don't generally like to stand in a long line holding dirty dishes while staring into the dishpit area where a bunch of guys are wearing grungy clothes and scrubbing away on pots and pans, etc. Especially since the customers just finished eating. Needless to say that sometimes as you are scraping like a madman food would fall on the floor. This is no big deal because we just clean it all up again afterward, but today was different for some reason.

The mad rush of scraping was over and most people had already filed through the scraping line. This meant us scrapers would just start cleaning up our area while the last few slow-eaters dwindled through. Now you have to understand that after working all summer in the dishpit with a bunch of guys where everything is "behind-the-scenes" sometimes you get a little crazy. Often it's just the typical "spray you with the water hose" or "pretend to throw your hat in the garburator", but this time it went further. As we were cleaning up we looked down by the garbage can and there was a site to behold...there was left over food that we the scrapers had missed scraping into the garbage can and it was lying there in a puddle of water and other unknown garbage juices. And among the garbage was a piece of pepperoni.

It was at this point that "logical Sheldon" must have morphed into "crazy Sheldon" because I then bent over and picked up the piece of pepperoni in my fingers and held it up. As the soggy pepperoni slice hung limply from my fingers with the mixture of garbage juices dripping off it, I suddenly heard the words I knew were coming... "I dare you to eat it!" someone said. "For how much?" I snapped back. Things went silent again as most people did not want to put their money where their mouth was, but not everyone. "I'll give you a dollar," I heard someone say, "and so will I," announced my good friend and fellow scraper. Hmmm....$2.00 to eat this gross, dripping, slimy piece of pepperoni that was on the floor by the garbage being soaked in garbage juices and water...I knew the deal wasn't going to get better even though I had already asked for more. All reason completely left me at this point and I bit into the piece of pepperoni and in two bites it was gone.

"Ahhhh! Gross! I can't believe you did that!" were just some of the comments being made. Thoughts of just how sick I was probably going to get entered my mind, but I quickly shoved them aside... I had just made $2.00 and had the "respect" of all my fellow workers! And so ended another crazy adventure in the Caronport Dining Hall dishpit as we all went back to finishing up our work.

What do you think? Fact or Fiction? And have you (or would you) ever do something like that? Let me know in the comments section! I'll post the answer in a couple days.