E R N I E ' S   H O U S E   O F   W H O O P A S S

PRELUDE -------

During my freshman year at Purdue, some idiot living on my floor of our residence hall foolishly stated that he would allow his head to be shaved for $100 -- right down to the scalp. A few of the guys on the floor organized a collection process and quickly raised the money. The event became what we termed "a floor function" and guests were invited to attend. The whole thing took place one evening around 7 o'clock or so with about 30 guests in attendance. It was a real popular floor function and no real harm was done to anyones image or pride. But that's not the story.

Here's the story:

THE SETUP --- -----

About a year later, I was a sophomore living on that same floor and we starting talking about tasteless things we'd do if the money was right. Some guy mentions that the previous year we had a great floor function wherein a floor member shaved his head (allowed it to be shaved, actually) for $100. Other guys stated that there's no way in hell they'd shave their head for a scant $100; it would take hundreds or thousands of dollars for them to do it.

Then some guy (me!) says, "What would it take for you to eat a spoonful of shit?" Huge sums of money were now being discussed for this tasteless feat. A million dollars was a real common figure. So my friend, George, decides to open his big, stupid mouth (opps! foreshadowing). George says something along the lines of, "I'd never let somebody shave my head but I'd probably eat a spoonful of shit for $50." Really, George? $50?? Are you serious?

LOGISTICAL MATTERS ---------- -------

Yep, George was serious. And before George had a chance to change his mind, the fund raising gears were set in motion. Word went out that another floor function was being planned for next week sometime. A "lottery" or sorts was held. (The Feces Lottery was my idea. We were faced with two problems: we didn't have $50 for George and we didn't have any shit for him to eat. I solved both problems in one brilliant moment.

For the low, low price of just $1, you could buy one chance at winning the Feces Lottery. (For $5, you got 6 chances.) After we had the $50 in hand, we placed the names of the contributors in a hat (actually it was a trash can). We drew out 2 names. One of the "winners" declined his prize and we drew another name. We now had our two lottery winners and, you guessed it, those two winners got to be the Feces Donors.)

George made us agree that the feces in question had to be of a somewhat "normal" variety. Nothing green and runny, no diarrhea, nothing with high corn-content, ... standard requests for this sort of thing, I guess. That's why we had two lottery winners; we decided to give George his choice. We told the lottery winners they couldn't do things like eat a bunch of prunes, have Taco Bell for five days straight, etc. This was, after all, a floor function and we would to keep things friendly.

The day before the floor function was to take place, the two lottery winners were escorted from their rooms (one at a time) by part of the fund raising committee. Each was sent into a bathroom that had been certified "feces free" with only a medium-sized cup (we had to be sure that no illegal feces made it to the big event). After each of the winners completed his assigned task and departed the bathroom, the cup was sealed and placed into the refrigerator of the most honest guy living on the floor for overnight safe-keeping.

[BTW, one of the winners had a little trouble on his first trip to the bathroom and ended up having to give it a second try a couple of ours later. He came through like a real trooper the second time around. ]

THE STAGE IS SET --- ----- -- ---

Although attendance was strictly by invitation only, we had a huge crowd -- well over 100. George was escorted into the elevator lobby (where all of our floor functions took place) as if he was a king. The crowd shouted and cheered upon his entrance. George was placed center stage complete with homemade bib and a big glass of water. [He was sober, upon insistence of the fund raising committee.] After giving George about 5 minutes to sweat in front of the crowd, The Feces Fetcher made his way into the lobby - with one cup in each hand held proudly over his head.

The crowd went wild.

The chants of GEORGE!! GEORGE!! GEORGE!! GEORGE!! reached a deafening level.

The spoon (a soup spoon!) was brought forward by another member of the fund raising committee. In accordance with the rules, the two cups of feces were presented to George for his perusal and, ultimately, his decision. [This is where I became somewhat concerned about George -- about his physical well being, not his mental well being. Mentally, I knew he was already scarred for life and nothing could change that now. I thought if he could live until morning we could get him home to his parents at the end of the semester and they could deal with the long-term mental damage.]

After a hesitation of about 10 seconds [I thought he was going to pass out], George, pale-faced and covered with sweat, selected the cup on his left. The crowd roared again: GEORGE!! GEORGE!! GEORGE!! GEORGE!! Still in accordance with the rules, The Feces Fetcher spooned up a nice helping for George. (The rules stated that this helping would be a "healthy spoonful" but not a "heaping spoonful.") The spoon was then handed to George, who was still wearing his bib and still had his big glass of water in his other hand.

(The rules stated that George had to do the following in order to get his $50 reward: insert spoon w/ feces into mouth, remove spoon from mouth clean of feces, show the crowd the clean spoon, swallow feces so as to remove it from mouth, display empty mouth to crowd by sticking out tongue and saying "awwww" like you do at the doctor's office. After that he could then eat or drink as he wished. He also had to keep it down for at least 10 minutes -- we figured after 10 minutes if he wanted to send it back through his mouth the other way, that was fine with us, but he didn't get any extra money for it.)

George then raised the spoon w/ feces up to eye level at arms length from his body. He made a couple of wide sweeping arcs in front of his body with the spoon so that everyone in the crowd could get a good look at the winning feces. [It was at this point that I could tell George *really* didn't want to go through with this thing.

He was wondering about the consistency. "Will it be like pudding or more like ... what? Will I notice the smell? How much of it will get stuck between by teeth? Will I have bad breath the rest of the night. Am I going to double over and throw up saliva covered human feces in front of all these people who don't really even know me? How did I get myself into this mess? Can I possibly get out of this?"

Well, George took a long, hard look at the crowd and knew that there was simply no way to back down. I almost felt sorry for the guy. Just thinking of what he was about to do actually made my stomach queasy and my knees a little bit weak -- and I used to deliver roadkill to my "friends" back when I was in high school.]

After everyone had a good look at the feces covered spoon, George held it straight in front of his face, about a foot from the tip of his nose. He took a deep breath and brought the spoon toward his opened mouth -- and stopped. The spoon went back to being a foot from the tip of his nose and his eyes sort of rolled up toward the top of his head. [I thought he was gone for sure...] He then steadied himself, took another deep breath, forced the spoon into his mouth, (flash! flash! flash! from all the cameras in the lobby) closed his mouth and his eyes, and then withdrew a nice, clean soup spoon from his mouth.

We all held our breath and just watched. He inhaled more air through his nose and swallowed hard. [I'm sure I imagined it, but I thought I heard the lump go down -- just like in the cartoons.] Then in one instant, his eyes opened, his mouth opened, his tongue stuck out of his mouth and he rolled his head back so we could see inside his mouth. 8-(>) It was empty. George then took another deep breath and gulped down the entire glass of water. Two people in the crowd got sick and had to go outside. George made his way down to the bathroom where he had toothbrush and toothpaste waiting.

THE EPILOGUE --- --------

My friends and I made our way back to our end of the floor. We couldn't really believe that he had done it -- and only for $50, we said. What an idiot, we said. We were then discussing whether or not he would get sick before morning. Or would he kill himself tonight while we slept? Would he ever do anything that stupid again? Would he ever eat shit again for $50? Certainly not, we decided. We could tell it had been a traumatic experience for him. And we knew he'd never be the same.

Then as four or five of us are standing around talking outside our rooms, George comes out of the bathroom and starts walking toward us (his room was at the other end of the floor). He comes down and leans up against the wall next to us. Everyone is speechless. Silence. Then I finally say, "George, I can't believe ..."

But I'm cutoff in mid-sentence as George belches (BUURRP!) and says, "Oh, excuse me." That was all I could take. I had to go in my room and sit down for a few minutes. I'm just glad I couldn't smell it.