The Post Death of a Thousand Condiments Bathing Trauma: How I Learn to Live with…

The Post Death of a Thousand Condiments Bathing Trauma: How I Learn to Live with the Fear of Condiment Counteraction

For context, please see the links at the bottom of this post. This is dedicated to all the new people that I met as a result of the "Shared Circle Challenge".

This is probably the last I will post about the challenge and punishment for losing. It was all great fun, but I do not want to become a one-trick-pony talking about one moment forever. That's what we have ex-football players for. 😉 However, for anyone attempting to take on The Death of a Thousand Condiments in a bet of your own, consider the following words.

Soon after starting the bet, I was way ahead of my brother +Keith Cramer and totally expected to win, hands down. In the immortal words of Han Solo, "Don't get cocky, kid!" Keith's team rallied at the end and I went down not just a little bit, but in flames! This perhaps can be translated into a life lesson overall, me thinks. So, fully expecting my impending victory, I went out and purchased all the "condiments" to be dumped on the loser. We used the "condiment" term loosely to mean most anything you could dump that was icky, sticky, gross, or smelly. For the purists, we did not take the word "death" literally either, so I think it's all good. I suggest shopping at discount food-stores like Aldi's and then hitting the international aisle at your local super-mart. All in all, I raided my pantry and spent about $50 – for my own punishment. Oh, Karma, thou art a fickle mistress.

In a nutshell, our competition had to do with counting the new followers of groups of 50 users each that we handpicked on Google+ over a period of time. These teams became known as Team Keith and Team Scott. Nobody on the teams, or the captains themselves, had over 5000 followers. We shared our individual team circles and promoted healthy interaction. Team Keith had a secret weapon. +Kari Tedrick got the ear of G+ giant +Mike Elgan (742,000+ followers and a penchant, it appeared for mischievousness). Mike shared the Team Keith circle in the last moments before the midnight buzzer with the simple words, "Add this circle in the next fifteen minutes and Team Keith wins." And so it was. I was smoked by the casual thumbs down of a modern social media Emperor.

Leading up to the punishment my attitude was, "Oh, it will be messy but fun. No problem." The morning of the punishment, though, I was actually a little anxious. We had decided beforehand to broadcast it on a couple G+ hangouts and video it. I am comfortable behind a keyboard, but get butterflies in front of a camera. It did not help either that I wanted to wear throw-away clothes and all I could find was an old pair of swim-trunks (styled early 90's) and so tight that I could barely breath. However, as the punishment commenced, barely breathing was, in retrospect, quite helpful. On the white t-shirt, I had written, "Thanks +Kari Tedrick and +Mike Elgan" whose names are forever associated with this in my mind. Honestly, it is funny the way the human psyche works. Either of them could win the Nobel Prize for curing cancer, and I would still have flashbacks to syrup and mustard (and more) if I saw them.

2pm was the designated zero-hour for my punishment. A few minutes beforehand, in nothing more than my too-tight out-of-style swim trunks, my custom tee, and a pair of goggles for eye protection, I stepped onto the plastic tarp laid out in +Kristi Fahlsing's basement. Kneeling in the large blue storage tote, I was reminded of an episode of Breaking Bad where they needed to get rid of a body by melting it with chemicals and one of the characters was sent out to get a storage container similar to what I was now in.

Then it started.

I heard Keith say, "Alright, we're going now!" Then he up-ended a bottle of maple syrup over my head. It was a strange oozy feeling like either a giant bird had targeted me or I had a bad, but painless, head wound. I ran a few fingers through the syrup dripping from my face and tasted it, just to be a butt. This wasn't going to be so bad, I thought. Messy, but whatever.

From that point it rapidly became a blur. Literally, since the goggles I was wearing were soon covered. It was like looking through a windshield smeared in mud with no working wipers. All in all, a few minutes in, still not so bad, aside from the odor. The smells were building on themselves with each food stuff dumped, poured, cracked, or smeared onto me. I remember saying something comparing it to the smell when you walk through an alley in New York, except not so good. I always thought the alley smell was reminiscent of food even though it wasn't. Here, it was the reverse; it really was food but wasn't smelling too appetizing.

I was purposely tasting things occassionally and enjoying the disgusted noises from those in the room and those in the hangouts. It was fun playing to the crowd. When the hot sauce hit, it was game over. Suddenly, this really was worse than I imagined. First off, the way hot sauce comes out of the bottle, in little blasts, felt like someone was spitting on me. Then, after a few seconds the fumes were up my nose and burning my eyes even behind the goggles. Tears were flowing!

I also remember the strong odor of wasabi cleaning out and burning my sinus passages. I had lost track of time and I know that my recollections as of this writing may not exactly match the video footage; the memory appears to be ordered more by impact than linear time. In any case, soon into it, my eyes were crammed shut and so long as they stayed that way it was okay. If I opened them even a little bit, it burned a lot! So, to recap, I'd lost my sight, smell was out the window, and even the sense of touch was not serving me well sitting in a pool of goo that was running down every part of me and that was accumulating surprisingly deep up the sides of my legs that were tucked under me.

Some more memories, randomly presented:

• I mentioned earlier that I was tasting things, just to be gross. Basically, if I could catch an individual pickle or fruit loop as it fell, sure. Otherwise, no way! When I watched the video, I saw that at one point I was eating something fairly clean out of my hand and, since my eyes were shut, I did not see that someone squirted mustard all over my hand before I took another bite! Nicely played.

• Things that broke through the smell before becoming part of the ever rancorous mixture of odors were vinegar and sauerkraut. I absolutely hate sauerkraut. I have never liked it and I like it less now that it's been dumped over my head and down my shirt!

• Another unexpected oddity was getting sugar dumped over me. I already could not see and smell, and suddenly I couldn't breath either! The way it was poured, it was like a sand storm around my head!

• Oh yes, I have to mention that some of the items were really cold – especially when the dumpers got creative and put things down the back of my shirt!

• The eggs didn't crack easily on my head. It was like getting whacked with something!

• With every sense severely compromised, I had a strange vision as things were being dumped on me of what it must be like to be on the wrong side of an elephant at the wrong time!

Toward the end I took off the goggles because they were not doing anything for me anymore and I hoped to wipe my eyes with a towel. I did wipe my eyes but still could not keep them open for more than a fraction of a second at first. After the hangouts were done I was able to wipe them better and could keep them open even though they burned. It took running them under the shower for a few minutes (several times) before they were fine. Upon viewing the video I could see that the goggles were actually full of hot sauce! I should have listened to +Lori Cramer when she told me to tighten them more!

After everything was finished, I got up out of the tub very carefully because it was extremely slippery. I had to have everyone leave the basement area so I could strip down. There was no way I could even walk through the house to the shower until I got somewhat cleaned up. When I took off the shirt, it was clinging to me tightly and made a "shluck" sound kind of like the suction release you hear when you pull your booted foot out of deep wet mud. The shorts were tight to begin with but now that they were all covered in guck, I had a hard time getting a grip on them. I finally shimmied out of them and dropped them on the plastic floor covering. Standing in my briefs, I had a slight panic attack that perhaps the G+ hangouts were still turned on, but luckily either Keith was not that mean or he did not think to punk me like that!

I proceeded to take a spatula and started squeegeeing off my body. Remarkably, it wasn't coming off as easy as I thought. It was really stuck on my skin and ground into my body hair. I had some help from Kristi, who never thought this was a task she signed up for when we started dating! 😉

Showering overall was also worse than expected. I figured I'd just hop into the shower and rinse all the gook off me. Nope. Have you ever gotten butter or grease on you (which I did since a bottle of squeezy butter was also part of the mix) and you just can not get it to come off your skin? It was like this over my entire body from the mixture of everything. I finally used kitchen soap everywhere to cut through it. Several areas of my skin were stained, I think from the steak sauce or worcestershire sauce and it took some scrubbing to remove the orange-brown tint. I also found several strands of sauerkraut in places I'd rather not talk about!!!

Would I do it all over again? Hmm… For a bet without a good pay-out, probably not. To find a bunch of good people like Keith and I did as a result of this contest, yes. Yes I would. I would also totally cheat to make sure Keith got to experience The Death of a Thousand Condiments for himself! I'm not proud, but I'm honest. 😉

Lastly, a funny thing happened throughout the weekend. After losing, my daughter heard me cursing good-naturedly mentioning +Mike Elgan so whenever anything bad would happen, she would say in a cute teasing voice to me, stretching out the syllable of the last name, "Oh, like Mike ELLL-gan?" A legacy he does not even realize!

+Kari Tedrick and +Mike Elgan, watch what packages you open in the mail over the next week. 😉

Related links:

• The gruesome video: http://goo.gl/K49Pj
• Details of the contest: http://goo.gl/0JNhR
• Details of the punishment: http://goo.gl/7pHRy
• More pictures: http://goo.gl/CBZPb

Special thanks +Emilio Boronali for the title of this post. 😉

Embedded Link

Keith Cramer – Google+ – Death of a Thousand Condiments – The Video!

Here's the…
Death of a Thousand Condiments – The Video!

Here's the video that many of you have been waiting for. It's worth it! 🙂

This was the culmination of a 10…

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