Jalapeno eating contest

Being from El Salvador, Jose is no stranger to eating spicy foods. One Cinco de Mayo we were at a Chi Chi's restaurant when they announced that they were going to have a jalapeno eating contest and the first place prize was a cruise for two. Jose entered the contest thinking that if he won, he could give the trip to his brother so that he would not have to pay to get his car fixed when he wrecked it. Pretty smart idea if you ask me.

So Jose enters and is eating peppers like we would eat potato chips. Round by round Jose is finding creative ways to eat them. One time he throws his head back, holds the pepper straight up at arms length slowly lowering it into his mouth. One round he throws one up in the air and catches it in his mouth. One round he eats one like Pac-Man and so on. Of course we were all drinking so even if they were hot he would be to drunk to care.

Eventually it gets down to Jose and one other dude and the other dude just quits. We can and can't believe that he won all at the same time. So Jose gets the cruise tickets and we get to thinking about this. You know he could really rack up if we planned this out. We could hit at least two or three bars depending on what time they are holding the contest and where they are located.

So the next Cinco de Mayo rolls around when Jose tells us that he has a secret weapon. He says that his sister's baby was teething a few weeks back and she was giving the baby Ora-Gel. So he thought he would put some on his tongue to combat the hot from the peppers because he was going to hit as many of these contest as he could. You know that sounds like a pretty good idea. So he puts the Ora-Gel on his tongue and we go into the restaurant.

Jose is standing up there with this humongous grin on his face. Round One! One pepper down and we get the thumbs up from Jose. Round two and Jose gets his pepper down but something is not right. Round three comes and Jose starts coughing, spits out the pepper and then slams a beer.

What?! Knocked out in the third round?! How did that happen? Oh, you know when you are eating that you will SWALLOW right after you chew. And if your tongue is COATED with a topical numbing agent you will swallow it and it will make the muscles in your throat numb, temporally paralyzing them, in turn causing you to choke on what ever you are trying to swallow.

The bad part is that we were drinking and cheering him on, just thinking he was being silly while he was chocking. Or as Jose put it "I was chocking to death and you bitches were laughing at me"