Male Shrovenist Pigs

Here's a recipe for you: take one Christian holy day, add an all-you-can-eat pancake special, and sprinkle liberally with immature male mindset.

What do you get?

Apparently two very upset stomachs and a lot of laughs.

It all started a few months ago when I suggested to some co-workers that we take advantage of the $2.99 Tuesday all-you-can-eat pancake special at a local family restaurant chain, Golden Griddle.  Everyone agreed this was a fabulous idea, but Tuesday after Tuesday kept passing by without anyone remembering.  By sheer coincidence (though I think I see the guiding hand of divine intervention here), we finally booked our pancake feast for the most appropriate pancake feast day of the year, Shrove Tuesday.

It is a sad but true fact that no man can even contemplate an all you can eat meal without somehow making it a test of virility.  True to form, one of the "invitees," Ryan, emailed the following response: "You guys are dead, I'm so winning 'pancake 2006.'"

After all the pre-competition trash talking, only three of us assembled at the Golden Griddle to "celebrate" the holy day: me, Ryan, and Dave.  We started with four pancakes each.  My strategy was simple: victory through intimidation.  I ploughed through my pancakes in no time, all the while trying to ooze an "ain't no thang" attitude.

My bravado fooled no one, I guess, because Ryan calmly finished his pancakes and looked ready for more.  Dave, on the other hand, said he was done.  Done after four pancakes?  Disgraceful, really.

For our second plate, our server asked us if we wanted five pancakes each, or three.  We chose five, of course, and we made Dave order another plate too.  Finishing these five pancakes became difficult near the end, but finish we did.  After devouring nine pancakes, however, it was clear that the remaining five pancakes on Dave's plate would decide everything.

I'm sad to say it, but I was in bad shape at this point.  I shuffled through the stack of pancakes, and selected the smallest one I could find.  Every bite was a culinary labour of Hercules.  No matter how good a pancake is, and these ones were nothing to write home about, every forkful feels like cottonballs in the mouth and lead in the stomach when you're that stuffed.

Ten pancakes in, my stomach teetering on the brink of disaster, my meal was done.  Ryan wasn't doing much better, however, but at a certain stage in any "athletic" competition, the winning margin is not about who's strongest, or fastest, or, for that matter, most gluttonous; no, victory becomes nothing more than a matter of will. Sensing my weakness and fighting off his inner demons (well, that or mild nausea), Ryan reached for his eleventh pancake.  I tried to convince him he didn't have to eat it -- that a draw was a noble outcome -- but eat it he did.

And with that, Ryan won.

Comments

[jasmine]

Love the title. Love the post.

Thanks for the giggle :)

j

[Ivonne]

Rob,

What a great post! I have been tied up work lately so haven't had the chance to read much. This was hysterical.

And don't worry ... you were noble in defeat!

[ejm]

Heroic feat indeed!! I don't know how you managed to get through even the first pancake on the first order of four. Because, as you said, putting it rather mildly, Golden Griddle pancakes are nothing to write home about. Even for $2.99....

-Elizabeth