Peep Show (It's not what you think!)

It was my plan to save this little story for next year around Eastertime, but after giving it a brief mention in a recent post ("Hang onto That Easter Joy!"-April 25), I found I just couldn't wait that long.

You've heard of pie eating contests and hot dog eating contests, I'm sure; but have you ever heard of a marshmallow Peep eating contest? Leave it to some pixilated college man-child to come up with this harebrained idea! When my #4 son was a senior in college (I won't tell you where, because it's a top university with a reputation for academic excellence, and I wouldn't want to create doubt about the intelligence of its student body), he and his buddies decided to put on a Peep eating contest in celebration of Easter.

Most of the judgment-challenged participants were lucky enough to vomit as a matter of course afterwards. My son, however, was not so fortunate; he ended up with a leaden stomach jammed full of hastily ingested marshmallow chicks and bunnies. He suffered a good deal of intestinal distress in the aftermath of the infamous contest, let me tell you, because Peeps--if I can put this in the most delicate way possible--tend to sort of gum up the digestive tract. They act like a plug, or a dam, if you get my drift. (At least that was one man's experience.) It almost took a stick of dynamite to finally open the floodgates. My poor son! All that, and he didn't even come in first!

You would think that after such an unpleasant ordeal, he would never eat a Peep again--but you would be wrong. My boy is made of pretty stern stuff, I guess.

During the festivities, these crazy kids took a picture of a pool of multi-hued pastel vomit, with an uneaten blue Peep bunny rabbit artistically posed atop the mess. I want to keep the gross-out factor on this blog to a minimum, so I decided not to post that one. (You're welcome.)