Competitive Eating At The Breakfast Bar: He Cheated

My kids were eating hardy but they were no match for the black hole that seem to comprise Scott’s digestive system.

A big deal for my kids was staying in my mother’s cabin in Vermont with their grandmother for a couple of weeks in the summer. They were allowed todo that each year for a period of around 5 or 6 years. That was before before the diversions of friends, summer sports and jobs took precedence and they weren’t as interested in traveling to the northern woods. My mother was close to 80 when she peformed these yearly miracles.

The whole exercise was a big deal for them and possibly a bigger deal for her. Although she was very strict with me, my kids were better teasers and negotiators ; she was much more liberal with them.

An example of this leniency was : she let her youngest grandson drive her new Ford Taurus. He was 9 years old at the time. Her rational was there were fewer cars on the road thus it was more appropriate for a 9 year old to drive in northern Vermont. Where were those rationalizations when I was growing up? I drove at the New Jersey legal age of 17 and not one minute before.

The year that really put her to the test was when my oldest son’s best friend Scott accompanied them to the cabin. He was a handful.

Mr Barrabee, I like you, may I call you Dad?

No Scott, you already have a dad.

Pleeeeease!

Ask your dad if you can call me Dad!

Ok, Dad

Scott, you’re pissing me off!

He was that kind of kid, likable — but a real handful.

Somehow my son and Scott wheedle permission from the powers that be to go along with my kids to stay with their grandmother for 2 weeks that summer.

Everybody survived.

My job was to drive the 450 mile trek, pick them up and haul them home; usually a 2 day obligation. My mother would have the rest of the summer to recover.

The kids looked at the car ride home as a highlight of their visit. The highlight of that highlight was our traditional stop in the all you can eat breakfast bar at the Bob’s Big Boy in Massachusetts. We’d not eat ANYTHING until we arrived at the restaurant so we all would have maximum appetite. We usually hit there around 11:00 so we had a good hour of gluttony until they shut it down at 12:00.

Of course this was the first year we had Scott with us.

In all fairness, my kids built up feats of overconsumption to him. By the time we arrived at Bob’s Big Boy, he was raring to show everyone he could keep up with the best we could offer.

Mercifully, I was not in the competition. Just my 2 sons age 10 and 7.

I turned the kids loose on the breakfast bar. Seemed like they all were eating hard and playing fair. Scott had comsumed the most by far. He was a veritable vacuum for sausages. He seemed to be inhaleing them. My kids were eating hardy but they were no match for the black hole that seem to comprise Scott’s digestive system.

Until:

A miniature live Bob’s Big Boy came strolling over to our table. He had a label that said Manager and another that was a name tag stating his name: Buster.

He asked me to step into his office.

In his office was a bank of security cameras, a couple of which were trained in on the breakfast bar. He replayed the video in which Scott starred.

From a Bob’s Big Boy point of view, the video was — most unattractive.

There was Scott, on the video, shoving sausages into his pockets, shirt, pants, under his hat. I even think he stuffed a few in his socks. Of course he always had 8 or 10 on his plate.

Ooops! There’s the server dumping a new batch in the heated sausage tray.

I apologized to Buster the manager, realizing that he looked at me as the responsible party. He has every right to.

I offered to return the sausages after I confiscated them from Scott.

I had a feeling that he wouldn’t take that deal.

He settled for $20.00.

I figured that an appropriate punishment for Scott would be to say nothing.

Although my kids treated him like a little king. After all, he wasn’t going to tell them he had all those sausages they thought were on his inside, actually were on his — outside.

The distance between that part of Massachusetts and our destination, Philadelphia is about 350 miles, 6 hours.

Scott rode the whole way wearing his sausages. After a while they started to smell.

I dropped off Scott at his house in Philadelphia and saw him go running in with his little backpack of clothes and sundries.

His parents never questioned me on the sausages.

Scott never again called me Dad.

I was never force to call him Mr.Sausage.