Last night I either completed my passage to manhood or did

something incredibly stupid for no particular reason whatsoever. In a

rather unusual nightly excursion to the famous Quaker Steak & Lube in

Sharon (if anyone is so deprived as to NOT know what it is, it's a

restaurant famous for its chicken wings) with about eight other people,

one of our group purchased a bucket of ATOMIC hot wings. Now this

pseudo-masochist, who shall remain nameless, ate ten of these wings and

drank 1½ pitchers of water, too.

Not to be outdone, the four other male members of our small army

decided to see if they could stomach one. I watched them as they all,

one by one, consumed the wings from Hell and all had a uniform

reaction: sweat squirting from their pores, eyes watering, and faces as

red as beets. I watched, and laughed. Then they turned their attention

toward me.

I refused. Under no circumstances would I touch one of those wings.

Call it self-preservation, call it cowardice, but there was no way they

were going to convince me to burn my mouth out.

Peer pressure can be a powerful thing.

At any rate, I eventually caved and accepted the hot wing. I looked

at it with the same feeling condemned prisoners must have when,

strapped into the electric chair, the executioner's hand closes around

the switch. Needless to say the peer pressure intensified.

Armed with a full glass of Pepsi, I brought the Atomic hot wing to

my mouth. The scent alone burned my nostrils. My lips curled in a

defiant sneer as I watched the expectant faces of my comrades.

Then, abruptly, I bit into the wing, tore a chunk of meat from it,

gave it a few cursory bites and washed it down with a few gulps of my

drink. Thrice I did this.

The great thing about Atomic hot wings is their delayed reaction.

About a minute after I finished the accursed wing I began to feel pain.

It got progressively worse. Not even a mouth full of ice cubes could

get rid of it. Time and space became one as my mind raced in frantic,

delirius circles. Woodstock, Dude!

When I regained conciousness, I discovered that I was definitely

not the masochistic type, since the entire episode failed to turn me on

in the least. All-in-all it was kind of a semi-quasi-pseudorelgious

experience. The sick thing is that a lot of people do this kind of

thing voluntarily on a regular basis. They didn't even taste that good.

What's the moral to this story? Just say "NO" to Atomic hot wings.