Close Call at Hot Dog Eating Contest

By James Martinez

A week ago, I found out about the chili hot dog eating contest event at the Lehman College main cafeteria. I’m a sophomore at Lehman and I’ve never seen an eating contest here. I heard that the prize for the contest was a $100 gift card. Either way, all these factors interested me. I wrote my name and number on a paper and put it in a box that all the numbers would be drawn out to choose 10 contestants. I was chosen at random and I received a call to participate.

Finally, the week of the contest arrived and counting down the days I became very excited. Never being in a contest like this before had me very intrigued. The day came and the clock was ticking fast. Before I knew it, I had 10 minutes to arrive at the cafeteria. When I arrived at the contest, eight of the contestants were there. I walked into a big crowd of spectators and the table was set for us with our names on the seats. There were napkins and water on the table. The remaining contestant arrived, the hotdogs were brought out and the contest began.

Immediately, I ate three of the hotdogs — no problem. By the time I got to five, my stomach began to fill up. I drank some water, washed the food down and regained energy. At this point I noticed that I was ahead of everyone and moving at a steady pace. The crowd began to cheer my name. I took that energy that they gave me and ate three more hot dogs. At this point it was a two-man race between me and a stocky guy two seats down from me, everyone else pretty much gave up.

I was cleaning up a little and drinking some water since I was ahead of the guy and I began to enjoy the lead. Next thing I knew, he caught up and we both had one hot dog left, he beat me to the punch and won the contest. I won second place but people still cheered for both of us and we shook hands. I couldn’t move afterwards because I was so full. As I joked about the whole thing with a friend of mine, some reporters came, took some pictures of me and interviewed me. Although I lost, I still had a great time. I would love to be in Lehman’s next eating contest.