the milk drinking contest.

Now I'm a firm believer in milk. My mother raised herself a bunch of milk drinkers, I figure because of the rule that we could never leave the dinner table until we had finished our glass of milk. So you'd think that I would be entirely in favor of such a thing as a "milk drinking contest." Not so.

The rules of the milk drinking contest as are follows. The contestant must drink one gallon of whole milk in an hour. In that hour and another quarter of the hour following, the contestant may not throw up. I'm also thinking that the contestant may not urinate, but I'm not sure on that rule.

I've seen several people try it, all boys. They always throw up. You'd think that with such an obvious pattern here, we'd have a hard time getting new people to try it. Oh no. It's not that hard to find some unsuspecting male and get him to try and impress us with his macho milk drinking skills, even if the new victim knows the history of the game.

I just don't think it's possible. Someone explained to me once how it wasn't possible, something to do with the stomach acids or something. If that explanation couldn't convince you, the long line of veteran contestants could probably do the trick. They've tried pacing themselves, starting off strong, waiting for a second wind. No matter how you put it down, the milk comes back up. But each new boy always thinks he knows the way that has never been tried before.

I hate to generalize here and say that the milk drinkers are all male. I'm sure in the illustrious history of the milk drinking contest, there have been female contestants. I just don't happen to know any.

And boys enjoy the whole contest when they're not the drinker, too. Maybe boys like vomit. Note that while I might call these same people men at other times, it is not when I'm describing how they point and laugh as their friends throw up into the bushes.

I don't enjoy watching the inevitable end of the milk drinking contest. I turn my head, and hope that I can't even hear the sound of a gallon of milk's revenge, not that any of them get the whole gallon down before they start bringing it back up. I do enjoy rolling my eyes with any other females in attendance at the ridiculousness of it all. Once each new boy fails, he becomes part of the team of recruiters, trying desperately not to be the last guy that made a fool of himself by being bested by a measly gallon of milk.

I don't guess I mind it. It's stupid, of course, just another ridiculous thing that we do that makes old people say that youth is wasted on us. But it's cheap entertainment, even given the price of dairy products lately, and even the old would agree that there are a lot worse things we could be drinking on a Saturday night than a gallon of milk, though the end result is pretty much the same. Then again, milk won't give you a hangover the next day or impair your ability to operate heavy machinery, and I've never seen a milk-induced table dance. Drinking milk and then throwing it up? Why, that's downright wholesome.