The College Years

In college I found friends and freedom. I remember having my first beer, and thinking hey this isn't so bad. The second one was good. All the rest were really good.

I turned into a beer snob, only drinking the best I could find, turning my nose up at Milwaukee's Beast because "it all tastes the same anyway". I wasn't so stuck up about the food I ate. Pizza, wings, hamburgers, It was the diet de jour. Somehow I managed to get an ID card from the manager at Wendy's, which gave me a 10% discount. I ate there almost every day, always getting the single with cheese combo - $2.87 with tax.

Every Wednesday night was wing night at a local restauraunt called Ryans (not the all-you-can-eat buffet place). $5.99 for all the wings you could cram into your head. I had a friend - we'll call him Piehole - who prided himself on his ability to eat and not gain weight. He would brag about going to Cheeburger-Cheeburger and eating two of their one-pound hamburgers. You got your picture on the wall every time you finished one, and he got his put up twice that day.

Anyway, on Wing nights, Piehole and I would try to see who could eat the most wings. If you're not familiar with hot wings (who isn't?), they're chicken wings that have been seperated at the joints, deep fried without breading and soaked in a butter-hotsauce mixture. They're served with celery and a side of either Ranch or Bleu Cheese dressing. We're talking 75-100 calories, each. We would eat something like 100 of them, and be proud of it. Of course, Piehole liked to run 12 miles a day, so he never had a problem. I went from 185 to 215 that first year.