Gallon Challenge – not for the faint of heart

Warning: If you have a weak stomach, read this post with caution. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

After church today, I witnessed a “Gallon Challenge” in the basin on the land next to our church building. A student (we'll call him "Burt") took up Rocky, Jason’s intern, on his offer of $100 if Burt could drink and keep down one gallon of milk (2%) in 30 minutes time. Rocky has done this dozens of time and has never had to fork over the money, because without fail, the “victim” cannot handle that much lactose in that amount of time. He was also smart enough to get Burt's dad to sign a consent form!

Well, this stunt was, in a word, gross! And pretty darn funny to watch, too. It turned into a fifteen minute event of drinking, gagging, and projectile vomiting, and as expected, Burt went home emptyhanded. Two pretty interesting thoughts came out of this stunt, in my head anyway. First, our church has amazing facilities! We have so much land on which the youth can play – a playground for little kids, open fields for students to play battleball, ultimate frisbee and such, and an empty basin for the aforementioned display of puking. Of course, we need more indoor classroom space for our growing congregation, but at least we have the land on which to build! Definitely a different church experience than I'm used to.

Secondly, Rocky, who videotaped this little challenge, is going to turn it into a short video for X-Service tonight by no doubt creating a “Burt's burping” sequence of sorts set to music, and then showing the vomit going in and out, in and out, of the poor guy’s mouth to make it appear as though he ate his own vomit. And I got to thinking how amazing it is that we have the capability to create a mini movie of sorts, with special effects and believable dubbing, right here at our church! I mean, compared to my parents or grandparents, I have such incredible computer knowledge. But compared to the tech guys here, I’m still using the “Atari” of the 21st century. Our vast advances in technology are pretty amazing and cool on one hand, but also depressing on the other because I almost feel like what’s the point of learning a new program or concept or machine if it’s just going to be replaced by something bigger and better by the time I learn to master it?

Yes, I got all this out of the “Gallon Challenge” that some poor, misguided teen agreed to. What can I say, my mind is at work :).

Anyway, in other news – I have a second interview with my top job desire on Tuesday, and hopefully I’ll know shortly after that if I am the chosen one. Crazy how strung out the job searching process can be, considering that this is the job I sent my resume in for while in Wisconsin for my dad’s September funeral! Hopefully it will be worth the wait …